When I was in third grade, before the advent of the horseless carriage, my teacher, Mrs. Joyce, had a guinea pig in the classroom. One weekend I had the awesome responsibility of taking care of it. It was cool.
So when Katie came home with a permission slip to take care of Furball, the classroom hamster, we said of course. We even volunteered to care for him over any extended weekend.
Well this is the first three day weekend of the school year and he is our charge. Katie, who wears her heart on her sleeve, has been counting down the days for weeks.
We set up a little pink table in their bedroom for the cage. When I came home from work, Katie reported that she put Furball in her Barbie car, but that he kept crawling out. Chris reported that Katie and Marissa had attempted to bathe him. I saw a bloody tissue on the bathroom floor later that evening. Katie had been on the receiving end of Furball's displeasure at his almost bathtime experience.
I would have thought that would have taught the girls a lesson. It did: wear long-sleeved jackets before continuing to annoy the poor animal. Perhaps not the right lesson.
He came home in a cage with bedding, but he spent a large portion of the weekend in a clear plastic tub. It was easier to constantly grab him that way. That also meant he could no longer hide in his plastic log. The girls didn't bother to put bedding in the tub so they we exposed to little hamster stool. It appears that this hamster poops about every 20 minutes, so Marissa would frequently have to dump the tub contents in the toilet.
Chris drives the hamster back to school Tuesday. Has this second-generation rodent-sitting experience been educational for the girls? Well, no. But the tradition continues!
A few months ago while Chris was not looking, Claire used a stool to grab the canister of fish food on top of the aquarium tank and dumped it all in. It was about a half year's worth of food. When the aerator was done grinding up the flakes, the water was very murky and most of the fish died. To save the remaining fish, Chris spent a couple of hours vacuuming the sediment and performed many iterations of removing of most the water and replacing it with clean. A few days later, a new filter had made the water hospitable again for fish from the pet store.
Realizing that we cannot prevent Claire from getting into everything, Chris relocated the fish food about as far away as we could reasonably put it: on the top shelf of the cabinet above the microwave.
Well...
Last week on while I was not looking, Claire dragged a dinette chair across the kitchen floor, climbed onto the counter, opened the cabinet above the microwave, got the fish food, climbed down, went over to the aquarium, got a stool and dumped all the food into the tank again.
Not surprisingly, the water got murky AGAIN and most of the fish died AGAIN. Chris spend a couple of hours AGAIN cleaning the tank. Two days ago the tank was once again clean enough for six new fish (once has since died).
Chris decided to buy a smaller canister of fish food this time in case Claire decides to do it again.
If she sticks to schedule, Claire will kill the fish again sometime next spring.
I haven't posted a political entry in a very long time. A lot people blog about politics because it is what is on their mind nowadays and they feel strongly about it. I'm that way too, but like most of America, my tiny blogging audience is split pretty equally between the two candidates and I don't want to turn off half my constituents. Either of them.
So I get my fix by reading postings of 17 other (widely read) political bloggers instead of launching into my aspersions here. I reserve that for my poor co-workers. They really appreciate it. :-)
But I did do something Thursday night that I feel compelled to blog.
On Thursday I went to John Kerry's stopover in Springfield. This being a pretty red county, I could only find one person interested in going with me. A neighbor who briefly had a Kerry sign in his lawn. I barely knew him. He had seen Kerry before in Zaneville, so he knew what to expect.
My Internet-printed ticket said the "doors" to the outdoor Springfield event opened at 9:30pm. While I thought that meant we should get there about an hour early, Mark informed me that these things always run late, so planned to leave Hilliard around 8:45pm. Chris took great pleasure in jovially reporting to my conservative neighbors the boondoggle I was embarking on that evening so I am no longer an anonymous voter in the cul-de-sac.
After three missed exits delayed us (we pre-occupied in a lively political discusion), we arrived in Springfield around 9:45 with every parking lot for blocks surrounding the town square quite full. The line to enter the cordoned-off town square was about 8 blocks long. It snaked past a couple groups of Bush supporters but other than a few taunts between the two groups everything was peaceful. The line made steady progress, but moved slowly. It grew in length behind us while we were in it. While in line, I spotted a co-worker who was laid off a few years ago. He had blue VIP tickets (his father is local district judge) that allowed him to enter a much shorter metal detector line.
Around 11:20pm, my friend and I reached the white tent with the metal detectors ourselves. I had unfortunately not left my two-inch pen knife at home. It was confiscated. But at least I didn't have to sign a loyalty oath.
We missed the first half of Edward's speech, but heard all of Kerry. His speech was a little sharper than his standard stump speech. There were 18,000 people there and we were way in the back. Although we could see them on the stage a several hundred feet away, we ended up watching them on the giant projection screen. Being in back of the town square made for a quick exit when the speech was over. We were able to leave town with most of the crowd behind us.
Our car was stopped at the entrance ramp to I-70 on the way home. For security reasons, no one can be on the freeway alongside Kerry's 9 bus caravan. Cop cars led and trailed the buses to prevent cars from passing. (The same is true for his opponent's entourage.) We followed flashing lights all the way home. Very cool.
There is now a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on my car. (I hope it comes off after the election.)
In the interest of balance I should mention that my babysitter could not watch the girls all day Wednesday because she had tickets to the Bush rally in Columbus that day. I don't know if non-voting supporters have to sign his loyalty oath.