greenstorm | Entries tagged with ratties

Well. Last weekend was rat show leading into two weeks of midterms... 7 or 8, I think. Luckily they're spread out a bit. Lots has happened. Let me see if I can pick out the important stuff.

I've started going to counselling with Blake, to a place suggested by

estrellada. It's SUPER EXTRA VERY helpful. It's useful, not just in that we get to learn how to talk to each other and have a safe space to do that, but because we can easily package up any discussion that's getting weird or heated and bring it there, so it removes tension from everyday interactions. VERY GOOD. Why have I not done this sooner in my life? Oh, right, cuz I've never been with anyone willing to go.

I had one of those rat tragedies I was hoping would never happen. As a breeder, I know there's some risk associated with giving birth; I've had difficult births happen to my rats (and I only breed the best, so that means it's the best you lose if something goes wrong). I had my friend and mentor Lizzy's rats over here for show quarantine, though, and one was very pregnant. I checked on her in the evening... and then in the morning I found her dead, in a little puddle of blood. No babies. I had heard nothing. The phone call that ensued is an experience I never want to repeat; I have luckily never lost anyone like that, but now I understand that it can happen. I will keep breeding rats, but it's scary.

The weather here is pretending to be spring on and off. It's sunny sometimes. Today is sunny; today I was in class most of the day watching slide shows and videos in a dark room. Sigh.

Class is going pretty well, however. We have some more discussion-oriented classes, and a bunch more around urban and rural sustainability and sustainable community elements. I'm enjoying these, though some of them are marathon-long. I'm learning interesting things. I'm also looking very forward to having school done so I can tidy my house, pay more attention to my african violets and rats, reintroduce myself to my friends... you know the drill.

I definitely feel better on sunny days. This house, though it has great natural light, has awful-to-no light fixtures. I need to get my grow lights set up in places strategic for human *and* plant health.

Aaaannndd.... thinking of how or what I'm going to garden with this year. That is a pleasant thought, when it manages to slip in there.

I am splitting my time between being in love, not being in love, and schoolwork.

My routine's altered a titch, and will continue to be a little different for the next little while what with the six-day schoolweeks.

Right now everything is humming along with my chosen people. I seem to be at the point where the people who I make an effort to include in my life are making efforts back, there's stuff to say and do between us, and everything is flourishing. It helps that depression seems to be taking its ugly fingers off my friends this month.

I've been skipping the occasional big social event in favour of downtime: either sleep or time to myself or homework. This has been a fantastic choice on my part. I've been ramping up the exercise, which, when combined with my incipient period, means I'm tired all the time but this will pass. My body feels good. My weight is up and muscles are starting to show up. I have a fitness goal for firefighting and a physical ability goal for yoga: 5-minute balances, yo.

Sewing's gone underground in favour of sleep and homework, for now. I have some pants I really should get done, though: I want the products of that sewing, I really do.

My baby rats are stupid-crazy adorable, and my BEWs are still white-- this is a breeding goal I've been pursuing since the beginning, and only just achieved-- and one of the boys is an excellent shoulder rat already. I want to be able to take my rats to school in the evenings, I mean one or two on my shoulder, but nuts to me. I don't think it'd go over well.

My freezer is super well-stocked, which means that the money shortage at the end of the month doesn't stress me out as much as it might.

I need to do something about my branding, about my taxes (which involves sending off a written, signed document), and study for my citizenship test.

I'm home from school. Too angry to do homework, and no one's home, so it took me a minute or two to figure out what to do. Answer: eat dinner. Maybe that will help.

I'm having one of those days. Well, that's not true-- I'm having one of those evenings. When every day is basically two days long, there's twice as much chance of a clusterfuck occurring and to be honest if you check back with me half an hour after I've eaten it'll probably be okay.

The real problem, with today and with my schedule, is food. I don't have the money to eat out three times a day, and I'm out of the house for between two and three mealtimes. I'm out of the house for long enough that food will go bad over the course of the day-- especially given that the first six hours of the period is spent in an especially warm room, and there's no refrigeration at any point.

My friend Eva suggested a wonderful idea-- I freeze things like soups, and then when I get to school in the evening I microwave them. The freezing should keep them cool enough. I tried that today and, of course-- the microwaves run, but after six minutes nothing was even approaching warm and my break was half over, so no dinner for me.

..and on no dinner, when the iMap government site we're using to do classwork returns me (and one other person) a series of proxy server errors while everyone else loads them up fine, it makes me crazy. The thing never loaded. Three hour class.

...and when my fancy-schmancy supposed-phone-type gadget allows me to recieve 30 emails asking over and over about things I don't have time to deal with right then, but DOES NOT ALLOW ME TO CALL ANGUS because it keeps dropping signal, I just want to kill someone. Anyone will do.

...and then I get home and there are all those little annoying house things, like the dinner from last night that I didn't pack for school didn't get put away and has so gone bad, and someone's left garbage in the middle of the livingroom floor, and it's definitely for the best that Angus isn't still home...

...I just don't know. I had a really rough weekend. I feel better today, I felt okay last night, getting enough sleep makes a difference. I'm still clenching my teeth often enough that my jaw hurts, and it's less that I don't have time for people, though that's true, than that I have patience for the presence of only maybe three or four people that I can think of out of everyone I know.

There's also a looming homework load-- a math quiz tomorrow, a test Friday on thirty or thirty five plants, ID and latin names, my first aid course Saturday. It really gets me to think about what's important.

And this is important. School is important. People I love are important. Exercise is important-- I'm squirrelly enough from all the sitting around that I've started doing pushups again as something I can do in the middle of a floor when no one's looking that's work. Food, much as it would be convenient otherwise, is important. Working is important; I need to feed myself and pay my rent.

Rats- are becoming less important, right now. Breeding is, at least. It's just not a priority, nor is having the number of rats I now do. I will definitely be downsizing over the next two years.

Social events, too, I have always cherry-picked but I'm feeling even more selective about them now. I like my friends because they're smart, they're fun to talk to, they're snuggly and they have sensibilities I like. Sometimes they're funny. Events that don't showcase these attributes, well, what's the point?

Enough. Dinner's ready. I'll worry more about things afterwards-- or not.

So last night I had all these plans for the weekend. Even this morning, I got up, first thing I did was come write, sorta muddled, but there were things on the go. I was going to have breakfast with Bob, go to the farmer's market with CrazyChris and posse, start chicken soup, drop off a rat downtown, watch West Wing into the night-- you know, plans. I was going to do some rat cages before breakfast.

Thing is, we've had this bad air warning from all the forest fires lately. The air's been disgusting. And I have a lot of elderly rats with respiratory infections. The thing about rats is, they're smart, they have feelings going on, and-- like people-- they care about stuff. When I got home last night Corn Pops was dead. I'd known she was on the way out for awhile.

But-- last night another one went, and Heat Lightning and Olympia are both in bad shape. I'm pretty sure that last night that particular rat was just waiting until I got home and said goodnight to die. When I'm particularly close with them they've been known to do that, I am particularly thinking of Gabe who was boarded at Lizzy's and waited till I showed up, waited till I picked him up, then died in my hands within half an hour. He was a very old man.

Four is a big toll for one week. Olympia might still surprise me, as might Heat Lightning, but... I've had a fairly smooth stretch so far. It's just time. And it's just not easy. It sneaks up on you, something with a lifespan of a couple of years, because that time passes so quickly and then suddenly the young breeding girls' cage has all had babies and the oldest girl in the cage is coming up on 2 and it's... time to say goodbye.

I really don't care about my weekend plans anymore. I'm not going for breakfast; I need to clean cages so the cagemates of the dead ones can get on with it; I always scrub down the whole cage immediately after a death, and who wouldn't? The internet is a weird and fragile medium, it's just words and words and words. Right now it makes me incredibly angry to get those thin signals next to the intense reality of the life and death things I am engaging in, even just next to the smells and feels and sounds of the rattery. That's not the world and I don't want it right now.

Back to the rats.

Simone is amazing.

( Read more... )

So a couple of miles from the Mexican border a rat hoarder was found. Rats were running loose in her house... domestic rats, descended from a couple she'd originally got. The Humane Society was taking them away. The numbers we were hearing kept getting bigger... 120, 170, 300. The rats are all pink-eyed whites-- lab-rat-looking rats, very hard to find homes for with the general public, all of whom want fancy blue dumbo rats (if you don't know what this means, come to my housewarming and I'll show you).

The Humane Society was going to begin to euthanise the rats today, but between a large offer of help (just give us a few days to organize transport) from the rat community and a bunch of news outlets who were now covering it ( http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_15131269 & http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/23624490/detail.html ) they decided to wait a week, because-- well, because Pacific Northwest rat people are amazing. In the past, with the Petaluma hoarder, we'd organized a rat train up the coast, with different people volunteering different legs of the trip and people along the whole way adopting or fostering as many as they could. Many rats were saved from death. My own Honeypie was from that rescue, as fine a gentleman as you can imagine. He passed away awhile ago and was mourned by those that knew him.

Now it's happened again-- fewer rats seem to be involved in the hoarding incident than in Petaluma, but fewer seem to have been put down thus far, and as always no sex seperation means that we could have... let's see, assume half of the perhaps 300 rats are female, and half of those are at fertile age (a possible underestimate), and the average litter size is 6-8 pups. With good vet care many of those might survive. Now it doesn't usually work that way, we can do emergency spays if we get the girls early enough, if the rats are very stressed they reabsorb babies, but you begin to understand the magnitude of the issue.

The original thread is here: http://www.goosemoose.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,118/forum,rat/topic,4070335.0

If you can help, either by donating money or by fostering (for any length of time) or adopting any number of rats, can offer vet care at reduced rats, or can do anything else you can imagine to help, or you know anyone who can, please get the info to simone@littlemischiefrescue.org . She's coordinating. She basically makes the impossible happen on a regular basis.

We may just have found a miracle in the form of a pilot who has some time off and is willing to fly out there and bring back pacific northwest rats. We're trying to work quickly, because next week they start killing these kiddoes.

***

In other news, I've been using more pictures lately-- I thought hard about my own face going up. I've been taking a lot of pictures around the city with my iphone. I think I need to do some sort of pay thing or upgrade thing to post those pictures up here easily, and I'm wondering if I should do that. I thought a lot about voice posts for awhile, because they could be made from wherever, but the ability to organise my thoughts quickly enough as I go and speak at the same time may be beyond me-- at least for longer posts.

This place has been my voice for a very long time. I think it may contain my eyes too? A lot of stuff goes through here lately.

***

I'm rediscovering the art of conversational phone calls. This makes me so happy, in so many directions. It's an elegant solution to a bunch of things involving time, conversational styles and interpersonal awkwardness, and social drama for now. It's also something I haven't done in awhile. When I first asked if I could call him (after being reminded that the phone was an option) I felt as nervous as the firs time I called Kynnin. It's settling now, though I still-- you know, I do still feel like I'm an obstruction in people's lives, frequently, an intrusion or an unwelcome duty. I don't like to insert myself where I'm not explicitly invited. I get better and worse at this, and in different situations it switches around some, but there it is. It may be at the root of the interesting thing where people don't call me because they think I'm distancing myself from them which I'm only doing because they aren't calling me.

***

Speaking of distancing, here is a week in the history of my hair. Monday: aphids. Tuesday: unidentifiable kid sticky. Wednesday: raindrops, windstorm. Thursday: ficus lyrata latex sap. Friday: sunscreen & dirt.

Why am I growing it again?

Everyone is invited to attend the social event of the season - a new rat room warming party at Small Joys Rattery in Vancouver BC on the afternoon of Sunday May 15th. I know that Erin talked to a few people about this at Ratapalooza so there may already be people in the Seattle/Tacoma area to carpool with.

For many years, and in many different apartments, Erin has kept her rats in the kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom and/or in a large closet (have I missed anything Erin?) but at long last Erin and Angus have moved into an apartment big enough for the ratties to have their own room. They want to celebrate by inviting the whole pet rat community to show off their new place and ofcourse to show off their wonderful ratties. I may bring a few of my rats to show off too and we plan to invite Little Mischief Rescue to bring any availble, yet well quarantined rats, that they may wish to find homes for. Apart from that, to ensure that nothing communicable is passed on to our ratties, we do ask that everyone else leave their ratties at home. Should you wish to bring a snack for sharing with people and/or ratties, or a small gift for the new rat room, I'm sure it would be gratefully appreciated, however, it's certainly not a prerequisite to attending, and we would not like to see anyone stay away for lack of something to bring.

If anyone is interested in attending please let me or Erin know, and we will send you the address and directions. If anyone is interested in attending but needs someone to carpool with, let us know about that too and we will try to match you up with someone. Finally, for those coming from the US, please remember that a passport or enhanced drivers license is now required to cross the border and back. If you don't have one yet, it sounds like an enhanced driver's lisence can be obtained fairly quickly. And for anyone without the required ID who maybe be thinking of coming up for Ratstravaganza in February, now would be a good time to start thinking about applying for it.

Current Location: Canada, British Columbia

Getting sick, but: this will be a cooking evening, with ratties and boy. Named blue dwarf boy Levi and charcoal half-possum girl Jessica Rabbit. Couple more names to find! Snuggles and talking to be had too.

Hook pull tomorrow. Couple hours of work Sun, Mon night is GAVIN COMING, Tues is beekeeping thing, Wed is off work with scarification in evening.

Hmm.

Current Location: Canada, British Columbia

...not that predictability is a bad thing, though I understand popularly it's supposed to be a boring trait. Without some form of predictability all you have is static. Predictability whispers of an underlying order to things, of the ability to someday understand what's going on and tease reasons and structure out. It's reassuring.

I'm 'home'-- an empty house with an air mattress for the three-hour show quarantine, though I'll likely sleep here tonight. It actually feels very good to be somewhere nearly empty, I have been so busy that external simplicity (always soothing) is really the only alternative to having my raw nerves hammered on constantly. There has been a LOT of interpersonal in my life recently-- in addition to spending long weekends in 24-hour company, frequently in large groups; to working in public places; and to keeping busy with people in the evenings I've had a whole lot of poly stuff happen in a short period of time, a lot of dramatic interpersonal confusion, and I haven't had any time to myself or down-time, very little sleep, and astonishingly poor food stuff (one meal a day + beef jerky is not self-care).

I'm doing really well given all that, I've come through, I'm a little precarious but not unhappy. I'm supposed to be at the new place tonight to unload a half-ton of rat food just before eleven when quarantine time's up, which would mean a trip out there and back again, but at the moment I might ask Angus to do it for me. I'm having trouble maintaining body temperature, which mans I shouldn't be out in the night hauling things instead of sleeping.

I realise I am really very high-functioning sometimes, but I don't see it because my perfectionism seems to bleed over into that as well. If I don't do absolutely everything there is to be done, perfectly well and in the most efficient manner possible, then I just suck as a human being. I mean, yeah, I don't believe it to say, but I'm pretty sure that's fuelling a lot of this ridiculous scheduling.

Speaking of scheduling, May's weekends are full with the exception of one weekend I may well ditch the event in the interests of sanity. It looks like: scarification, cast party, rattery housewarming & ginger beer making, work weekend, housewarming & ginger beer consuming. June's half full: masquerade and Idaho road trip to a show. July's half full. September is half-full.

Wow.

I would say more, but the sound of my own voice needs to fall silent right now. Angus is out picking up dinner, and when I stop thinking the only sound in the room will be the dryer. There will be peace, and I will be smiling.

We got across the border no problem-- usually they pull you over when there are thirty rats in the van. The guard told us to have fun at Rattapaloosa. Ha. Shows are not about fun. They're about toughing it out.

That said, there are a lot of cute rats here. Basically this is where all the major pacific northwest breeders show up- we don't see each other very often at all, we live everywhere from Idaho and Oregon to BC, and we get to trade some genes, and we get to catch up on all the gossip (animal folk are very dramatic, and I stay out of it online). There are over a hundred rats in the house right now, Lynn of http://www.worldofrats.com has a bunch, and Michelle of CWR and Krislyn of RMIS are sleeping here as well as me and my breeding partner.

After we've had dinner we'll start clipping, washing, tail-scrubbing (with a toohbrush) and generally prepping. We'll get an hour or two's sleep, then the marathon begins tomorrow.

Seattle is really beautiful. It feels like it has more raw edges than Van, but perhaps that's just the areas I spend time in. I will post a picture of the Last Supper couch to facebook in the morning when there's light. You'll love it.

Current Location: US, Washington, King, Seattle, 14th Ave W

Alright. One more day of here-stuff, then I'll be away for the weekend caught up in the inevitability of the show. I'll be there with Lizzy, who is really good company, and with my super awesome ratsicles, including the peppy crazy girls' cage with Val and Kila, with Angus' sweet huge boys and Odin, and hopefully with Thor and Freyr and Pumpkin and (hopehopehope) with Opal as my shoulder boy. I have not been spending enough time with my ratties lately and I am looking so very forward to this.

I am going to bring my hand-sewing project (?) so I can put some time into it because I have been wanting to lately (?). Perhaps this craftiness is a side-effect of being dumped in Heph's shrine on the weekend?

Today is my outdoor day and it is dawning clear and beautiful. I have just realised I was supposed to make a plant list for the PP's pool deck and haven't even looked at the available stuff-- oops. It's not an easy spot to work in-- maybe the windiest in the city, reliably; there's salt spray; and they have no budget. Also the bed is too wide to reach across, so ideally you want a foot or two of no-maintenance stuff around the outside.

Things are going much more happily with Angus. I laid down that burden at his feet, he listened, and we'll worry about it when the time comes-- I just had to lay it down. He tries really really hard to make this work and it's super sweet of him. More on that some other time though.

I am really looking forward to next week. In my mind a week begins on Monday, progresses through, and is capped with the weekend. Next week is all house and boy stuff-- at the end I'll have a place to live and not be scattered across boxes and two homes! It will be restful. And I can start planning family dinners. That will be capped with a two-day phones-off date with Angus, which we've never done before but which is long overdue.

The weekend after that- rescarification! This time more intense! I should check about where we're gonna do that.

Then... the weekend after... I might actually (knock on wood) have a free weekend. If I don't go down to the states for a party. I could, I dunno, walk along the ocean and play on the swings or somethin'. Fantastical and amazing.

I should head down to work asap to get 'er done before it starts raining again. Please, sun, continue; I will wear short sleeves and my poofy vest if possible, I want you on my skin.

I always feel like I come across as either manic or trite when I write about being happy. There's some tooth to angst; there are things to dissect, it's easy to say 'where else do I want to be' and 'how can I change' and 'why are things this way'. I have much more trouble doing that when I'm happy-- mostly because I have not often given myself permission to feel purely happy.

I now have that permission. I have permission to look into dark spooky corners and to find either something terrible -- and still be happy if I wish -- or to find nothing at all, to find dust and candles and an empty room where I can curl up for awhile in peace if I wish. I have permission to be afraid of anything I wish, even if it's nothing, even if it's getting in my way, even if it's getting in someone else's way. I have permission to exist in the darkness as well as the light-- not to run gibbering through it, not to surf above it on analysis, but simply to go to those dark places and sit awhile.

This time, you see, when I went to be reborn: I wasn't. I was strapped to the wheel, it turned, and when it came back around there I was, still whole. The things I've been carrying: they're still mine. I'm more than sufficient to carry them as long as I wish, and set them down when I will. And, because I am not carrying such a terror over failing, and I am not so afraid of my own fear, these are steadying burdens instead of crippling. The loves and relationships in my life that take work and that I sometimes fuck up on and that make requirements of me are also provision against isolation and abandonment in the future. Carrying some of those weights at any time, and feeling them as weights, is merely part of the process. I have the image here of leaving on a hike and having a backpack full of food for the duration: it's something to carry. It's worthwhile later. It may well be annoying, it may hurt your shoulders a bit and sweat up your back and you may well complain about it sometimes, but it's ok. It's part of the process.

I could not stay on theme right now if I tried-- see me wander! I went into the dark and I felt welcomed. There was a smile there. I can stay there and play. That's all I'm trying to say.

There are many incidental wonderful details too: snuggling, a driving wind that literally pushed me around despite my best efforts, new faces and old ones made into potential friends, old static remade into play, poetry and song (literally!) and light and clarity and the resurrection of Blue Girl. It was, as they say, all good. I even got to talk a very little about agriculture and gut ecology at one point. I got to watch Angus in a makeout/painplay puddle which was totally involved and totally beautiful. I got to commune with a rosebush. I had conversations and I had silent being-togethers. Oh, words, how impossible you are as tools here. The things that happened, the feeling of them, can't be communicated-- they only sit inside me and influence my actions and maybe you'll see hints of them sometime in my actions, or maybe in a little bit of peace around the corners of my eyes.

In home news I lost Mikaela and Princess before I left, and Rocky when I got home. It's a sad thing. We think it was his heart, and perhaps it's good that he didn't get bred, but he was a sweetiepants. My flowers are starting to die down in the deck, just in time to move. I have trouble re-engaging my mind with the list of things I need to do (pay tuition, change address on drivers license, get contact lenses, maybe get a bus pass: all that busywork which takes so much of my space).

Now I have the urge to do some sewing (!!!?) and rest a little more, then go out into the world. My bosses left the day open as to whether I wanted to work or not, and the weather has confirmed that it would be okay for me to take this day to myself.

Really, Greenie? Sewing? How about a shower first? I know those skirts are already cut out, but don't you want to wait till your machine is up and running again?

I came home and there were thirteen babies in Popcorn's cage still alive. There was milk in all but one of them to a greater or lesser extent. Excuse me, I am incoherent.

That means that there are three of Charlie's babies out of the original 8 that I don't expect to immediately die, and to be honest only two I would not be surprised if they lived.

But... then there's this one little one with no milk in it. It looks like a concentration camp victim, where you can't believe it's alive, but it's fighting and squirming! It's not squeaking, it knows there's no point. just squirming. It's alive. The little thing is a third the size of Popcorn's own babies who were born a day later (and a day is a lot in baby rat days, at six weeks they can have babies of their own. Remember that). You can see every rib and hipbone. Its ears haven't begun separating from its head yet, it's definitely developmentally behind.

It probably hasn't had a full belly ever. Even the abdomen is sunken. I can't even tell what sex it is because the distance between urethral opening and anus is nonexistent cause the abdomen is basically nonexistent.

So I thought I had given up on the formula, but then I realised I hadn't. I make up some more, heated it, cut another little piece of rag the size of my thumb with a thread hanging off, and figured I'd give this a try. I dipped the rag, squeezed it almost dry, and put the tiny end of the thread against the baby's mouth. It started licking! I squeezed the cloth and redipped and squeezed and redipped. We're talking about fractions of a drop at a time here. Slowly some magic began to happen. Babies are pretty transparent at this stage, and you can usually see milk in their bellies when their full. This one didn't get full right away, but a little stretch of intestine under the skin turned white with the milk I'd given it. This bit of intestine is the thickness of a pin.

I stopped for a bit, rubbed the baby's tummy and anus super lightly with a corner of the rag-- the mom rats lick babies like that so they can clean up and the babies don't make a mess in the nest. They can't pee or poop without that stimulation. And... after awhile we could see a little milk in the actual tummy. A pinch test on the skin indicated less dehydration. The baby went back in with Popcorn while I went to the gym.

I was not expecting the baby to be alive when I came home. I was not expecting it to be alive when I came back from the gym, but there it was, and more lively too. When I picked it up it opened its mouth immediately.

I heated up some more formula.

After a little while (maybe twenty minutes of trying not to get formula up the nose, trying not to choke the baby, and coaxing it to open its mouth several billion times) there was an actual milk belly.

I definitely got a little formula up the nose. It cleared out a moment later, I hope. A runty baby like this may not even make it through the night, if it makes it to adulthood likely won't live long in any case, and will most certainly have respiratory issues if I have to keep feeding it every couple of hours, if it lives, because there will be some lung damage from this.

The baby is alive, though. And... this picture of a little white streak in a shocking ugly dead-looking pink thing is probably the most triumphant document I have besides my permaculture certificate.

Cut for looking really creepy:( Read more... )

I am:

-down one rat baby. I expect two or three more to die.
-sad. See above. Also the waiting impotently game sucks.
-sick. Fever & sore throat.
-busy today. Need to go to North Van to meet with my boss, go to the Drive for another meeting re: my upcoming cutting, and had planned to go grocery shopping with mom.
-happy I got to see Paul yesterday, but sad that he's gone again.
-feeling down despite extended cuddle time with Jacob and Esau last night.
(Oh my god. I just looked over at the rats and one of Oak's babies was playing dead. That did not help matters)
-really wishing I had access to all the snuggly boy rats I have at Lizzy's right now. Opal or Hades would clear all this angst right up for at least a bit.
-really wishing Angus was not sick too, but of course he got it first so I'm a day behind him. Seems to be the way things work.

Good stuff:

-at least one foster baby had milk in its tummy, visibly, when I checked this morning. I wish I knew if it was the one I fed or not so I would know whether to try feeding the others or not.
-Angus rearranged the livingroom and it's nice.
-Granville Island is actually a ten minute walk from my house, who knew? And there is galangal and lemongrass and kaffir lime there.
-May have found the beads I want to make cup-marker-jewelery with for Angus' folks.
-Cinderella has paused in trying to kill me through the cage.
-I have a box of actual kleenex in the house.
-The burmese rat girls are trying to distract me by hanging upside-down from the roof of their cage and making funny faces at me.
-Angus loves me.

Charlie isn't nursing or sitting on her babies. See the rattery blog if you want details. There goes my attention span for the next few days.

http://smalljoys.webs.com/

...and quiet.

I didn't go out for New Years last night, despite having a pretty fantastic concert lined up. I needed some quiet and some time to myself, and I need to not be up late every evening. Selfishness, self-care, who knows what to call it?

I've been updating my webpage some today, lazing around, and noticing how fleeting my American accent is when I'm once more surrounded by home. I even got down to the gym this evening -- I never go to the gym in the evening, but I'm going to try to wrench my schedule a little so I can actually hang out with people this month (since no one is willing to wake up early to hang out with me, bah!) and I think evening exercise might be part of that. I still won't be up past 11 for anyone.

I was just going to write about the super awesome Lady Luck babies I've got on the go right now, and how they make the most distractingly cute squeaks when their mom cleans them. Her schedule is like clockwork. Then I glanced over and saw that Popcorn might be having contractions, far apart still but there are some distinctive ripples and she looks like she's concentrating in between micronapping and yawns. It may just be hope and/or imagination. Everyone else is going crazy with barchewing and scuffling.

Today hasn't been an easy day for me. Angus has been both sick and in the midst of finally clearing his stuff out so I can get the rats in here, and so our little space isn't very useable and we're both crabby (blood day should be coming up pretty soon for me). Additionally I'm such a creature of routine that, lovely as the trip was, settling back to a different pattern isn't easy for me. Oh well, you can't say it wasn't overdue. I usually rely on him to break the slightly prickly silences that spring up so quickly around me, but he's not up to the job, and now he's asleep, and I'm tired.

Maybe I'm just seeing the babies moving around and not actual contractions? There's definitely odd movement going on there.

The rat rescue has just got in three wild Norwegian rats, tamed since they were babies and so not particularly fit to be released into the wild. I am so tempted, but we have zero space right now and I haven't got the time or attention to give to critters like that. Cinderella and Fang are more than enough for me.

I learned the other day that, well, this was on craigslist: ( Read more... )

...wow. It's happening, and I don't need to do it. That isn't me, it's someone else. That's crazy. It's wonderful, and it's weird. Who are these people who do this stuff in my city, who I never can get in contact with or meet? It's proof that if you sit around twiddling your fingers long enough something sometimes will start to fix itself without your help.

Maybe I really can run away and do canopy science now.

...

yeah, that'd be _nice_. I'd miss the rats though.

I'm trying to write in here, or else have a good conversation with someone talking-oriented, every day for awhile. I'm losing my grounding and I think that will help-- I need to get back into thinking mode rather than just-doing mode for a little while. Which one works best for me seems to switch up as time goes by.

Today I was listening to the Leonard Cohen cover album while weeding in the rain. Everything is so amazingly bright and colourful out there right now. It was an intensely beautiful day whenever solitude allowed it to be. And sometimes you'd look down and see something like this:
( Read more... )

All the maples look like they're glowing. It's been a dry long fall, so very good for colour.

Also, Lava's babies are home and safe so far-- moving the babies is risky because she can go crazy on them if she's stressed, but their eyes opened today so it's as safe as we can get timewise. They are lovely lovely babies and super-cute little snack treats rolled into one. They are going to be brats. I understand that colourpoint babies are supposed to have personality. These are burmese, and they will have personality. I just need to get in a ton of handling-- practice for bitey mom and her babies who will come to me in three weeks.

Here is Angus eating the baby rats (did I mention that my emotional seat is in my throat?)
( Read more... )

There are a couple more litters in the works. So many didn't work this summer, I need babies!

Regarding Angus, things have settled into what I can only describe as domestic bliss lately. I love that boy so much, and twitches both from my own internal insecurities and from his occasional missteps have settled down after so much consistently loving, considerate time. We're navigating through a mildly open relationship (I can't recall the number of times people have assumed that open means one particular set of rules or guidelines while poly or swinging means something quite different, and yet the meanings get switched from word to word for each person) and it's going well. I'm woefully busy lately, but he's working days again and that means we spend what evening time we have together.

It's getting to that settled stage where I can rely on him not just in an intellectual factual kind of way but rely emotionally on him being there. Now granted I'm in the middle of cry-at-the-drop-of-a-hat ovulation, but that means a lot to me from anyone, and especially a lover, and especially a life partner. Fuck people who say they'll stay with you only as long as it's convenient anyhow; surely I'm worth a little bit of blind bullheaded stubbornness but without that creepy I-need-to-take-over-your-life-cause-I-don't-know-what-I-want-ness?

I'm too tired to keep writing about this, but I must soon. Maybe this is just Leonard Cohen and the rain talking, but I have this kind of nostalgic glow in my head right now, and Angus manages to be back there in the nostalgia (do you remember the time we broke up or the time I had an emo eye and made that post about him smelling like geraniums or I sat and listened to him breathing or...) and also here in the present. Dammit, I both need and want stable, loving, sane people in my life. Maybe I better be sure I'm leaving room for them, mm, Greenie?

Oh, and I have a job interview tomorrow, speaking of room in my life. Maybe let's shave off some commuting time, shall we? Wish me luck.

So tiredly incoherent, but writing feels so good. Stopping.

Be well and goodnight.

There's a lotta love in my life right now.

Also:

The rollercoaster and my funny hobbies

Lady Luck and Fighting Chance:

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greenstorm

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Greenstorm's Journal

watching the cycle: leaves to mulch to soil to leaves

Entries tagged with ratties

Eye of the Storm

Three-Way

Fuming

(no subject)

Last Rat Hoarding Update for the Night

Rat Train, Going Multimedia, and That Voice In My Ear

As Lizzy So Eloquently Says

Ooooooohhh

(no subject)

Slice of Life

Whirlwind

Life is Beautiful

Triumph

One Down

Eating in shifts

Rat Emergency

Night is for writing

Aim For A Star

Love

Rollercoaster