In Which We Gear Up For Another Busy Week

Connor did well at school today, and it looks like he's fully recovered!  I'm excited that he shook this bug off so quickly and seems to be bouncing right back to his usual self.

We've got another busy week coming up, though a lot of it is actually appointments for me; I'm headed to the dentist and the eye doctor.  Since I spend a lot of time acting as a caregiver for somebody else, it's easy to forget to make sure I'm taking care of myself too!  I've scheduled these appointments a couple of times in the past only to cancel them when something Connor had going on took priority, and now I'm way, way overdue for both.  I'm down to my last pair of contacts, and I don't even want to think about the current state of my teeth.  So I'll be getting those taken care of next week while Connor's in school.  If I don't take care of myself it will be really hard to do a good job taking care of somebody else.

We'll be spending most of the weekend trying to catch up on things around here; the house is a shambles and I have crafting supplies scattered everywhere.  It's time for some major cleaning and to think about getting the house ready for winter, which is fast approaching.  The cats seem to sense the coming weather change and are busy shedding copious amounts of fur on every available surface. 

The gerbils seem largely unaffected, though they have slowed down quite a bit.  This is probably less because of the rapid approach of cooler weather and more because they are little geriatric rodents now.  Gerbils typically only live two to four years, and our little guys are over two and a half now.  They've been fantastic pets (other than that whole cannibalism thing that got us off to a rough start) and Connor seems to really enjoy them.  We'll probably get a new pair once these little guys have moved on; I think it's nice to have something in Connor's room that he can interact with, and they're certainly easy to take care of. 

Hopefully they'll stick around a while longer!

~Jess

In Which I Garden And The Cats Go On Patrol

Connor and I spent some time out in the yard today, and once I got most of my small projects done out there I just had to go down to the nursery and get some more plants so I could create twice as many projects as I had before.  Because that's how I roll.

With all the outdoor things I was doing today after Connor's bedtime I spent quite a bit of time going in and out our screen door at twilight, and I seem to have invited every bug in the general vicinity in with me.  So the cats are going absolutely nuts right now; they take their role as the Bug Destroyers of the house very seriously, and the war is on. 

Cricket has been stalking a crane fly for the last twenty minutes, and so she's been alternating between stalking the bug, leaping wildly into the air, and sitting beneath it making little chirping noises to coax it down so she can kill it.  She completely ignores bugs on the other side of our windows (unlike Loki, who is convinced he can eat them through the glass) but she will methodically hunt down absolutely every insect that dares venture into our house.

Loki is a bit more direct with his bug catching.  His strategy is to run pell-mell after the bug until it either flies too high, he loses interest, or he skids into a wall.  Loki is not a subtle creature by any stretch of the imagination, but somehow he still seems to get lucky.  Maybe the bugs are laughing too hard to get out of his way.

Seriously-- despite their different strategies, these two are so good at catching bugs that they keep the house pretty much insect free.  I have no idea how the heck the gerbil managed to survive not one, but two escape attempts with our cats on the job.  Maybe it's because the crane flies aren't intelligent enough to hide under the couch.

Crazy cats.

~Jess

In Which We Were Snowed In

Hi!

I am extremely happy to say that our Internet finally came back on this morning.  Our power flickered off and on this week but thankfully mostly stayed on, but our Internet has been down since Thursday.  Apparently a tree hit something important. 

Trees hit a lot of things in our neighborhood; our house is actually one of the only ones on the street that didn't lose at least one tree to the heavy load of ice and snow.  A few pine trees bent and broke in half, but it was the maples and cherry trees that suffered the worst damage-- most of them either lost huge branches or in a few cases, simply fell over.  We ended up getting about eight inches of snow, and then we got freezing rain for two days, which formed a thick layer of ice over the snow.  If you were careful you could actually walk (or more accurately, skid) along on top of the snow without leaving footprints.  It was crazy. 


We got off pretty lucky; I'll need to go up and check the roof because some of the neighbors' overhanging trees dumped a massive load of ice and snow on it once temperatures rose and it started melting, but otherwise we didn't have any major issues.  We're on high ground, so the flooding currently going on shouldn't affect us either.  Connor has been off of school since Tuesday, and Jer ended up home from work most of the week too, so we kind of had a miniature vacation. 

The temperatures are back up above freezing and the snow and ice are melting (hence the flooding issues), so the streets are mostly clear now.  The biggest issue is the downed trees-- many of them blocked roads and did a lot of damage. 

The pets had a bit of an adventure too-- a couple of days ago Jer and I were startled awake by a tremendous crash.  At first we thought a tree might have gone through a window.  After searching the rest of the house and coming up with nothing, I opened the door to Connor's room.

The gerbil tank was on its side on the floor shattered into several hundred pieces.  Loki was balanced on three legs on the plastic frame of the tank.  He was using the fourth to fish around in the shavings inside.  Apparently he'd snuck into the room when Jer went in to give Connor his medication, managed to wedge himself between the tank and the wall and then shoved the whole thing off the table.  He's nothing if not persistent.

I leaned over as far as I could to avoid the broken glass on the floor and grabbed Loki, who was too busy trying to catch a gerbil dinner to try and get away, and deposited him outside of the room.  Then I went back to play a fun game of "Stick My Hands In Paper Shavings And Broken Glass" to see if the gerbils had survived their unplanned aerial adventure.  Amazingly, when I clicked my tongue at them like I usually do before I feed them, two little heads popped out of the shavings.  Cranston had a tiny cut on his heel, but otherwise they were completely unscathed.

Those are some seriously lucky gerbils.

So they spent some quality time together inside their gerbil wheel while I cleaned up the mess and braved the weather to find them a new tank.  They're lucky the worst was over by that point, or they would have been stuck in our bathtub or something until we could leave the house again. 

Crazy cat.

~Jess

In Which The Gerbil Makes A Late Night Excursion

It was just past four in the morning when Jeremy abruptly sat up, flipped on the lights in our bedroom and nudged my shoulder. 

"The gerbil's out again," he said.
"Mmmrmrghblargh," I replied, and shoved my buried my head in my pillow.  I am very eloquent at four in the morning.
"Did you hear me?  The gerbil's out again.  You catch one cat and I'll catch the other."

After determining that I was not having a very odd, realistic dream possibly brought on by gerbil escape-related post traumatic stress syndrome, I stumbled out of bed, shoved a towel under the hallway door and lurched over to our small sitting room area in the bedroom, where Jeremy (who is rather ridiculously chipper at four in the morning) already had one cat corralled and was busy trying to keep the second from getting underneath our arm chair.  After we threw the cats into the laundry room and I put my contacts in so I could actually see, Jer got out the flashlight, we peered underneath the magazine rack and sure enough, Leelee's little beady eyes stared back at me for the second time in as many weeks. 

Leelee apparently has a death wish.

Leelee probably would have succeeded in his second Death-By-Cat suicide attempt if not for three things.  The first is that our cats are kind of dumb, and also (thanks to indoor living and a generally hygienic house) are not used to chasing small rodents.  The second is that we have laminate floors in our bedroom which easily pick up and magnify not only the sound of our cats banging around the house but also the scrabbling sound of a gerbil desperately flinging himself across the floor at high speeds and, due to not getting particularly good traction, making a heck of a lot more noise than he'd make on carpet.  The third reason is that Jeremy is a light sleeper and he picked up on the fact that something in the room was making a noise our cats couldn't possibly duplicate, which woke him up.

I quickly snuck into Connor's room to make sure there was only one gerbil missing.  Not only was Cranston (who is apparently either the dumber or much more intelligent gerbil, depending on how you look at it) still firmly ensconced in the cage, but the latch was still firmly shut.  I have no idea how Leelee got out, but I took off the cushy second story of their aquarium and put on the old top back on.  Then I stuck a brass bookend on top of the lid.  Hopefully that will solve the problem.  I walked back into the bedroom, grabbed a trashcan, and prepared to do battle.

Thankfully Leelee was much easier to catch this time--possibly since he had just spent fifteen minutes or so engaged in the extreme sport of Cat Baiting and was considerably winded as a result.  I popped him into the trashcan, brought him back into Connor's room and dumped him back in the cage, where he turned around, glared at me resentfully for ending his fun, and then charged over to his water bottle to rehydrate and to plot his next round of shenanigans. 

I went back to bed.  And if Leelee gets out again at four in the morning I hope that the space under that magazine rack is comfy.  He's on his own at least until the sun is up.

~Jess

In Which Our Gerbil Escapes

Well today was eventful.

This morning I took Connor off to school and then got ready to work out in the yard on the herb garden path.  I popped into Connor's room to feed the gerbils before heading outside.  Every morning when I come into the room, Leelee and Cranston run up to the top floor of their cage, stand up on their hind legs and beg in an adorable fashion for their breakfast.  Well, not today.  Today one gerbil ran up to the top of the cage and begged in an adorable fashion.  This just does not happen-- the gerbils never miss an opportunity to stuff their faces full of food.  Even when they're asleep if I click my tongue at them a couple of times they'll uncurl, dig their way out of their bedding and rush up to the top.  I went to open up the top of their cage and discovered that the latch had already been popped.

Leelee had flown the coop. 

Losing a gerbil in a house with cats is kind of a nerve-wracking experience.  Someone is going to find the gerbil sooner or later, and Leelee would probably prefer it to be me.  Since I knew there had been two gerbils in the cage last night and I hadn't found any rodent bits scattered around the house this morning I figured Leelee was still in Connor's room (we don't let the cats in there).  So I quickly plugged the bottom of the bedroom door with a towel and began with the most logical place for the escapee to be hiding: in Connor's closet. 

An hour and a half later I had completely dissected everything in Connor's room that could possibly contain a gerbil.  I checked behind his bookcase, in his clothes and underneath his side table.  I even took Connor's mattress off the bed, thinking maybe Leelee had managed to squeeze down underneath.  Defeated, I put the room to rights and then came out into the kitchen to have a cup of tea and plan a new strategy.  I thought that perhaps the gerbil had managed to squeeze under the door and was now in our craft room (the cats aren't allowed in there either) so I went back and plugged the door up with a towel just in case.  I was pouring the water for my tea and dreading the thought of having to paw through all of my sewing supplies when my alarm went off to go pick up Connor.  I figured I'd shut the cats up while I was gone just in case the gerbil decided to make a run for it.  They were easy to find-- they were both right by the couch.  In fact, they were both staring intently at the space under the couch.  Also Loki seemed to be trying to dig his way through the floor and had actually shoved a couple portions of the sectional apart with his head in an attempt to get around to the side.

Bingo.

I quickly grabbed the cats and shoved them in the laundry room.  Then I found a flashlight and peered under our couch.  It was really, really dusty-- apparently I'm overdue to vacuum underneath there.  Also every fuzzy cat toy we own seems to have been shoved under there by our cats, so I had a few false alarms.  On my third sweep with the flashlight, though, I caught the the reflective glint of a pair of beady eyes.  The gerbil was crouched as far back against the wall as he could go in the dead center of our couch.  Connor was being released from school in ten minutes.  It was a race against time.

I moved the surrounding furniture away from the couch, quickly jury rigged a trap with a small wastebasket and some seeds, and set about attempting to catch the escaped convict as fast as I possibly could.  I thought that if I set the food at the back, I could get Leelee to run into the wastebasket and then close the lid before he could get back out.  Leelee spent the first five minutes running up to the edge of the couch, looking at the wastebasket and then running back under.  I was getting antsy when he sprinted into the trash can at top speed.  I waited until I heard him start to chow down and then attempted to quickly tilt the basket up and close the lid.  It took me less than half a second.

In that half a second, Lee sprinted back up the side of the basket (now tilted at a 45 degree angle), squeaked out just as the lid was closing and launched himself Evel Knieval-style through the air.  He rebounded off the couch and skittered back underneath.

I put the trashcan down in disgust and went off to get Connor.

When I got back, I quickly put Connor down for his nap and then looked back under the couch.  Nothing but dust and toy mice met my eyes.  The gerbil had moved on.  I had a limited amount of time before we were supposed to leave for Connor's pony riding lesson and I didn't want to keep the cats shut in the laundry room all day, so I figured I needed a new strategy.  Just how good were cats at sniffing out rodents, anyway?  They'd led me to Leelee once; maybe they could do it again.  Loki is the more enthusiastic hunter of the two, so I figured he was the one to try.

I went and got Loki's leash.

Yes, we've leash-trained our cats.  It's extremely convenient for vet visits and while we don't actually walk them (they don't exactly heel like dogs will) we will sometimes take them out in the backyard and they allow us to follow them around while they munch on grass, contemplate small rocks and do the other myriad of things cats enjoy doing outdoors.  I snapped on Loki's harness and leash and carried him out of the laundry room. 

He promptly went to the back door and waited for me to open it.  Clearly we were not on the same page.

I took him over the couch and it was like a light bulb clicked on in his little brain.  Hey, there was a snack down there before!  He peered carefully under the couch, sniffed deeply, sneezed and then began stalking in the direction of the kitchen.  He hugged the wall, paused for a second at the fridge, made a slow circuit around the island and then sauntered into the dining room, where he sat down in front of the back door and meowed to be let out. 

It's a good thing people don't use cats as search and rescue animals. 

I locked a disappointed Loki back into the laundry room and left with Connor for his pony ride.  Two thirds of the way there Connor had a little seizure and promptly fell asleep, so we turned around and went home.  I packed him off to bed and (since I wasn't about to search the entire house for the darn gerbil), went outside, set up the little guy's apnea monitor receiver where I could hear it and started work on the herb garden.  Connor slept for the next three hours or so, and I'd dug out about twenty-five feet worth of the garden path when I heard him start making little "Hey I'm awake noises." 

When I walked into his room, there was a gerbil in the middle of the floor.  I shoved the blanket back underneath the door and prepared to do battle.

Over the course of the next ten minutes, Connor's room was completely destroyed as I systematically tore apart Leelee's hiding places.  In the end I finally managed to trap him in one of the bookcase cubes long enough to pick him up and get him back into the cage.  It looked like a tornado had ripped through the bedroom, but at least the gerbil's bid for freedom was over.  There's a new lid on the cage now, so hopefully there won't be any repeat attempts. 

So that's how a gerbil outsmarted me for most of a day.  Let's hope it's the last time this happens so the cats don't get to model what Jer calls "proper predator-prey relationships."  Though given Loki's performance today I'd say that Leelee probably doesn't have a whole lot to worry about.

~Jess

In Which Everything Is Fine, I Swear

Everything is fine!

Connor had no seizures yesterday-- looks like the medication is doing its job!  He's completely back to his usual happy-go-lucky self, which I am very happy about.  So he wasn't the reason you didn't get a blog yesterday.

No, the reason you didn't get a blog was because I was helping a friend move and didn't get back to the house until almost three in the morning.  And while I love all of you very dearly, any blog that I would have produced at that hour would probably be totally incoherant.  So now that I'm awake (Jeremy let me sleep in because he is wonderful like that), you get a blog.  Sorry about that.

At least an hour and a half of yesterday, by the way, was spent in transit to my friend's new house.  I mention this because my copilot in the car was a parrot named Jasmine.  I don't remember what type of parrot Jasmine was-- one of the medium sized green varieties-- but her main distinguishing characteristic in the car was that she was loud.  Yes, Jasmine was gifted with the ability to create sounds at volumes that rightfully should have been impossible given her lung capacity, and she delighted in making them directly in my ear.  I'm not sure I would have survived the car trip with my hearing intact if not for two things.  The first was that Jasmine apparently has an ear for Irish fiddle music.  I'll say one thing-- the bird has good taste.  When in desperation I switched my CD player on, she climbed over to the side of the cage near the radio and listened intently.  She had a tendency to try and join in on the chorus, but otherwise it cut down on the shrieking considerably. 

The second thing was that I stopped and ordered some chicken fingers at a drivethrough.  Apparently she took this as an implicit threat, because I didn't hear a peep out of her the rest of the trip.

At any rate, Jasmine and I got along much better after that, and the move was completed without further incident.  Really she was a very nice bird, and once she got over the excitement of being in the car she was a sweetheart.  I have the feeling that in other circumstances we would have gotten along very well.  But if our daughter Ellen ever decides she wants a parrot we'll either be getting her a quiet variety (and I'm relatively sure given my experience of parrots that such a bird does not exist) or seriously beefing up the sound insulation in her room. 

Or better yet, sticking to gerbils-- however unappreciative of my music choices they may be! 

~Jess

In Which We Meet With Connor's School District, And The Cannibal Rodent Strikes Again

We had a meeting this morning with Connor's school district in preparation for the upcoming year, and once again I walked out of it convinced our move to Puyallup was the best decision ever.  The meeting was fantastic; basically everyone there was concerned with making Connor's school year as safe and productive as possible.  There were some personnel changes this year, so it gave people a chance to meet Connor, ask us questions about his health and development, and talk about appropriate training and precautions for managing his medical care in the upcoming year.  Everyone was extremely nice, and we walked out feeling comfortable and confident that Connor will be in the best of hands. 

Seriously, the only way this town could get more perfect for us is if it contained a 24 hour chocolate store.  They could open it up next to that used bookstore downtown.  Chocolate makes everything better.

Um, anyway, so the meeting went really well and hopefully (provided I can get a doctor signature on one more medication form) he'll start up next Thursday with the same awesome team he had last year.  I can't wait!

On a completely unrelated note, remember our cannibalistic gerbil, Lili and the horrific events of last March?  And remember how we decided to get another victim friend for Lili because he was sinking into gerbil depression?  Well, Lili and his new pal, who we named Cranston (for Lamont Cranston-- yet another obscure and weird reference no one is likely to get) have been getting along like a house on fire, once they stopped that whole trying-to-fight-to-the-death business.  I've still kept an eye on them, though, because Teke and Lili got along pretty well too before Teke became the Special Of The Day. 

So last week when I walked in fairly late in the afternoon to get Connor up from his nap I did my customary once over of the gerbil cage, which I can see as soon as I walk into the room.  To my horror I saw Lili stretched out on his back in a corner of the cage, eyes closed and paws extended, with Cranston perched on top of his chest, his muzzle buried in the fur on Lili's belly.

"Nooooooo" I said, (it's best if you picture this in slow motion), lunging towards the tank with my arms outstretched.  Convinced I was seeing Lili meeting a gruesome (but rather fitting, considering) end, I jerked off the top of the tank with the idea that I might possibly be able to save him if I got him to a vet right away and it wasn't Too Late.  Cringing in anticipation of what I would find, I stared down into the cage to see how bad the damage was.

Both gerbils gazed up at me in puzzlement for a minute, and then went back to grooming each other.

Whoops.

~Jess

In Which Li Li Gets A Pretty Palatable New Friend, And Connor Tries Out An iPad

So today went a bit better, I'm happy to say. 

Connor was a total crabby pants, but that may have been because instead of paying attention to him this morning, I was watching our new gerbil (who is as yet unnamed) and our old gerbil (Li Li)attempt to dig through the mesh divider I've set up in their cage so they can happily settle down to the business of fighting to the death, which is what gerbils do when they meet a "stranger."  Vicious little things, gerbils.  At any rate, I'll be rotating which side of the cage their staying on daily until their scents are mixed enough that they stop trying to kill one another and decide to be pals. Supposedly it usually takes about a week, but we'll see.  Signs that they're starting acclimate will include attempting to groom one another through the mesh, sleeping next to one another, and when Li Li quits trying to season our new gerbil with pepper and miniature lemon wedges. 

At any rate, Connor did fine this morning but I believe that the novelty of the new gerbil quickly wore off, and then he wanted to go play something instead of watching me frantically add more wire to the top of the divider to prevent Li Li from climbing over the top in an aerial pursuit of his dinner.  I mean new friend.  Yes.  But for Connor pretty much after 11:00 it was one giant meltdown after another, with a brief hiatus for Speech Therapy, where he did relatively well.  It was probably the gerbil combined with the seizure of yesterday and the fact that he didn't sleep well last night-- he cheered up considerably after his three hour nap late this afternoon.

Julie, our Speech Therapist, brought out a new toy for him to try out today-- an iPad!  They have a number of adaptive applications -- Robert Rummel-Hudson has discussed the topic much more elegantly than I'd probably put it-- and the thought was that Connor was more likely to do well with an iPad than a PECS system because there's less touching and manipulating to do.  We put up a cute little xylophone application for him just to get him used to using his hands to work it, and he caught on really quickly!  I'm pretty stoked; the iPad or another AAC might just end up being a fantastic way for Connor to communicate with those around him that don't understand his Home Signs-- the personal language he's made up with his limited motor skills.  So we're going to see how this goes.

Technology is awesome!

In Which Connor Has A Quiet Day, And We Have A Sad Gerbil

Connor and I had a much-needed quiet day today. 

No more seizures, thankfully.  It's very likely that his seizure yesterday was, in fact, a breakthrough seizure because of his medication transition.  Tomorrow will be the first day he's on the full dose of Tegretol-- hopefully it will go smoothly and we won't see any more of those.

He had full function of his left side back this morning, which was nice.  We spent most of the day cleaning, catching up with family via phone (Connor provided the background piercing screaming-- he's not a big fan of Mommy's attention being on something other than him) and doing some gentle sensory therapy.  This is the first quiet at-home day we've had for a while, and it was interesting to watch Connor.  I think he was actually a little bored by our quiet, safe house, which is definitely a first for him.  I think he's started looking forward to our field trips, which is pretty amazing.  I'll be sure to take him out somewhere interesting tomorrow-- I'd like to keep that trend going!

In other topics, Connor's gerbil, Lili, has been spending a lot of time moping around lately.  Since he ate his brother a few months ago, he's taken to spending more and more time either eating or curled up in his nest.  I was worried he was getting sick, so I pulled out our gerbil books and did some research.  Turns out gerbils need a companion or they get depressed.  Seriously-- we have a depressed gerbil.  Since they don't make gerbil Prozac, apparently the only solution is to get your gerbil a companion.  I'm a little unsure of how this is going to work out, given the fate of Lili's last companion, but we'll use the recommended "split cage introduction" method and see how things work out.  So I'll be purchasing some hardware cloth and fashioning up a barrier when we get home.

I should probably mention that this will be a male gerbil companion.  We have no desire to experience the Miracle of Life around here; especially as I will be compelled to either find all of the gerbils perfect homes or keep them, and this will probably result in me having about 8,000 gerbils.  When you consider one pair of gerbils can have up to ten litters a year and have five to nine pups per litter, it wouldn't take much to turn me into That Crazy Gerbil Lady.  So Lili will have to spend his life celibate.  Tragic, I know. 

It's also relatively tragic that I'm worried about depression in a gerbil.  Oh well.

~Jess

Video: In Which Jeremy Walks With A Cane!

Before the video, I thought I'd give you a follow up on the gerbil debacle.  So Lili and I had a discussion earlier today (and if you don't think I would have a discussion with a gerbil you obviously haven't read a whole lot of this blog) and I am now mostly over the trauma of last night.  He was just doing what gerbils naturally do-- acting to prevent predators from finding the nest-- and while I'm not exactly used to seeing mini episodes of Planet Earth reenacted in my son's room, well, chalk this one up to a learning experience.  Of course gerbils are apparently also extremely territorial and will fight to the death if introduced to gerbils they weren't raised with, so Lili will have to be a solitary critter now.  I'll make an effort to keep him from being bored.  In return he promises to not mistake any of my fingers for dead gerbils.

And for goodness sake of course he had enough food and water.  After that whole earlier fiasco I've been a wee bit paranoid about that.

Um, anyway, moving on.  Jeremy has been doing a whole lot of cycling recently-- he has a bike now and since the weather has been beautiful he's been spending several hours a day out on the trails.  Today he found a tiny little bike rental place at the head of one of the trails he's been exploring, and since we have respite care tomorrow we're going to rent a bike for me and go out riding!  Provided the weather cooperates, of course-- it's pretty temperamental this time of year. 

Because Jeremy's been doing so much riding (and other physical activity) his balance has improved and he's looking great!  I badgered him into doing another video for me tonight as an apology to you all for the horrors of yesterday's post (be very, very glad I didn't include a picture with said post, by the way).  So without further ado, here he is!


Compare that to the last two videos.  Pretty amazing, huh?

~Jess

In Which I Make A Horrible Discovery (WARNING: DO NOT READ WHILE EATING BREAKFAST)

Okay, so that was pretty horrific.

We just finished up a lovely dinner with some friends of ours, and I went in to check up on the gerbils.  We had a vet appointment scheduled for tomorrow, and I was hoping the fuzzy critter would hold out until then, but things hadn't been looking too good earlier in the day.  When I went in, I was prepared to find the little guy gone.

What I was not prepared for was that the little guy was gone and the other gerbil was eating him.

Yes, I looked into the cage and was presented with a grisly Donner Party reenactment in gerbil form-- Lili, with a bloodstained muzzle, standing over the body of Teke, which he'd dragged to a corner of the cage.  Evidently he hadn't been too long at it because the dead gerbil was totally recognizable as a gerbil except that a good portion of his upper chest cavity was missing.  The only reason I didn't start shrieking at the top of my lungs was that Connor was sleeping and I definitely did NOT want him to wake up and see this.

I ended up picking up the ex-gerbil with about ten layers of paper towels, taking him outside in the rain (it being an appropriately stormy night), and burying him in the backyard.  Then I put a huge rock over the area so that there wasn't any chance some passing woodland animal would dig him up and eat him again.  I've been traumatized enough as it is, and picking up gerbil parts out of my lawn might just be what pushes me over the edge. 

So now we are not only out one gerbil, whose demise is probably directly my fault due to that whole water bottle thing, but I am also now totally creeped out by the remaining gerbil.  I mean sure, I read up on it and apparently this is natural gerbil behavior-- something about them disposing of bodies because they don't want to have predators attracted to the nest-- but despite that Lili now gives me the heebie-jeebies.  Other than the whole cannabilism thing he's perfectly healthy (though that may not be the case any more if Teke had something contagious), but he's also pretty anti-people, which is sort of fine with me right now.  They say that gerbils are social creatures and really need to be kept in pairs, but I think that Lili is destined to be a solitary gerbil.  I'm not sure I'd trust his reaction to a new "friend." 

I need a cup of tea.

~Jess

In Which Our Gerbil Takes A Turn For The Worse, And Connor Gets A Progress Report

Our poor little gerbil Teke is sick.  Evidently the stress of going without water for several days, combined with the stress of moving from the pet store here, has made him ill.  We thought he was fine-- he seemed to rally yesterday and the day before, but he started going downhill this morning and by this evening he was spending all his time huddled up in his little nest, refusing to eat or drink anything and squeezing his little eyes half-shut.  If he holds on 'till tomorrow I'll take him into the veterinarian's office, but I'm not highly optimistic.  Poor little guy-- I feel horrible about it. 

I hope he makes it.

Connor's teacher and aide did a home visit today to give us Connor's school progress report and talk a little about what they've been seeing him do at school.  He hasn't made a whole lot of headway towards his IEP goals, but I'm not really surprised by that.  It's not that the school is doing anything wrong-- just the opposite, in fact, as we are extremely happy with the program and teacher and think it's been really good for him-- but he's still so easily distracted by the other kids, noises, etc. that he doesn't demonstrate the things we see from him at home. 

We've been seeing a lot of progress here at the house, and I think that's directly related to school: that he's "processing" the things he sees in the morning later at home in his safe, quiet environment.  While I wish that he'd show them more of what he's capable of, and if we put him in a one-on-one environment he probably would, I think that the peer interaction and the pushing of his boundaries is more important right now, quite frankly.  He's never going to figure out how to interact with the world if he doesn't get that exposure, and since he's an only child right now and we have a relatively quiet house, he certainly not going to get that exposure at home. 

But while it's slow, he has made a little bit of progress at school, which is great!  We're very proud of every step he takes-- no matter how small-- towards being independent.  I'm really hoping that we'll be able to stick with the same teacher and program for next year-- we'll just have to see!

~Jess

In Which I Almost Kill Our Gerbils

Poor Teke and Lili almost shuffled off this mortal coil yesterday.  It's entirely my fault, too.

Gerbils really like to chew on things, including their plastic water bottles, so I got them a very nice glass version from the pet store that claimed to be "chew proof."  Well, apparently it was also drink proof.

I filled the bottle up five days ago, tested it to see if it was working, and put it in the cage.  Then I went about my business.  The gerbils seemed to be fine: no problems, though I noticed they seemed to be using the water bottle increasingly often. 

Yesterday when I went in they both seemed rather lethargic, and Teke in particular seemed to be pretty bedraggled-- his fur looked ratty and he seemed to be sleeping a lot.  I was going to clean out their cage and change out their water bottle in the process.  This is when I noticed that the level of water in the bottle had not gone down.  At all.

I tapped hard on the bottle.  Normally those things have a tendency to leak if you tap on them or jar the cage.  Not a thing came out.  I pushed in the little ball at the bottom.  It was bone dry.  So I ran and got a bowl of water and put it into the cage.  The gerbils flung themselves into it and began drinking like, well, like they hadn't had any water in five days.  Good thing gerbils are desert animals and used to going periods without water.  If I'd gotten Connor a hamster it would be dead.

At any rate I looked the bottle up online, and the reviews were terrible.  Apparently there's not enough air exchange allowed in the bottle, so after the animals have drunk at it a little while a vacuum forms and nothing will come out any more.  Several reviews offered instructions on how to modify the bottle to make it work, which I did.  It now has a tendency to leak, but I'd rather error on that side of things rather than have sad little desicated gerbils. 

They seem to be feeling much, much better today, but I'll be keeping a close eye on them.  And of course I feel horrible about the whole thing-- you can bet I'll be checking that bottle every day from now on to make sure that it's working. 

Poor gerbils.

~Jess

In Which We Add A Couple Of New Members To Our Household

I spent most of today doing light housekeeping and whatnot.  I've very quickly discovered that our laminate floors need to be vacuumed every day, as otherwise they quickly accumulate little piles of dirt, dust, cat hair, and unidentified bits of detritus that I don't want to look particularly closely at.  So that's the downside of the floors.  The upside is that I can actually see the stuff, so it makes me want to vacuum every day instead of whenever I get around to it.  I have no doubt that in the places we had carpet just as much stuff accumulated on a daily basis, only I didn't know about it because it was hidden in the carpet.  Gross.

Our old vacuum, while very nice, had those super-stiff revolving brushes that are supposed to scratch the heck out of your laminate floors.  So I got us a new, pretty inexpensive canister vacuum, which works really well and has the added bonus of being absolutely adorable.  This is the Herbie of vacuum cleaners.  It's bright orange and it has very large, cheery buttons and since it's a canister vacuum it follows me around like a little puppy while I'm vacuuming.  I find myself thinking about donning pearls, high heels and some sort of flowery apron whenever I use it, which given my usual level of domesticity makes it a really cute vacuum to have that sort of effect on me.

Jeremy and his mom were off at a sign language conference all day, so Connor and I had the house all to ourselves.  Well, except for the cats and our newest two members of the family that is.  Let me introduce you to:

Teke and Lili!

Bonus points for you if you get the extremely obscure literary reference-- especially since we split up the spelling. 

Anyway, they're the baby gerbils we brought home a few days ago!  Aren't they cute?  I think they even beat out the vacuum cleaner!  We got them for a couple of reasons; the first being my complete inability to resist any organic life form with huge eyes, but also because Connor has been sleeping in our room for the last five months since we couldn't turn the heat on in our apartment due to the necessary placement of Jeremy's hospital bed and my paranoid refusal to have a space heater on in a room I'm not physically in.  We felt like it might be a little rough on Connor to transition to not only a new house but to sleeping all by himself again, and so we got him the gerbils so he'd have company in his room at night.  He absolutely loves them, he spends a lot of time watching them, and he's having zero problems sleeping through the night, so I'm glad we got them. 

I apologize for the quality of the photos-- gerbils are hard to take pictures of.  For one thing they were terrified of the camera, and so whenever I moved it or depressed the shutter button they'd dart back into their little house.  As a result most of the pictures I have feature vaguely gerbil-shaped blurs.  There's also the fact that Teke (the brown and white guy) is about 8,000 times bolder than Lili (the all-gray boy), who seems to be shaping up to be a bit of a wimp.  All of Lili's pictures were blurry, so I posted the least blurry picture, which was taken with me standing on the complete other end of the room.  That was the only way I could get him to come out of his hidey hole while I was holding the camera.  Normally they're both pretty friendly, and I'm sure they'll get used to the camera eventually, but in the meantime this is what you're stuck with.  The fact that I'm also a near-incompetent with a camera and for every good picture I take of Connor there are 8,000 bad ones you don't see probably doesn't help either. 

The cats are normally not allowed in Connor's room, so nothing's really changed there except that whenever I go inside now they sit just outside and watch the door.  When I come out there are our two felines looming in a predatory fashion a couple of feet back, completely ignoring each other and staring at the crack under the door like small furry vultures.  I'm pretty sure they know what's up and are convinced that someday I'm going to lose control of one of the gerbils while cleaning the cage and they'll have the chance to rustle up their own fresh dinner instead of waiting for me to dispense it in kibble form from a bag in the pantry.  Hopefully this will never happen; I'm pretty sure that seeing one family member eat another might be mildly traumatic for Connor despite Jer's insistence that everything would be fine if we sang "The Circle of Life" during the chase and subsequent dining. 

But I wasn't quite up for a dog as of yet, and the thought of adding another cat to the mix makes me laugh until I have to sit down for a while and have Jer ply me with some sort of alcoholic beverage.  So we were left with small prey animals, and the gerbils had the largest eyes and as an added bonus were equipped with tails that reminded me of those of characters out of Fraggle Rock, so they were the logical choice.  Also they make very little mess, which is an added bonus.

Even if it gives me fewer opportunities to use my new vacuum cleaner.

~Jess