How 'bout Jake Watching Gerbils?

Now gerbil videos can get boring (no, really?), but not if you play their video on a big screen while the dog watches! He's watching the video posted below, but he thinks they're going to jump out of the screen or something. He got fired UP! I showed it to him 3 times and he started barking really loud, so I had to close the video. Then he saw my screensaver, which is a picture of us in the backyard with him, and he started growling at himself!

None of that beats the time our Doberman attacked himself in my mom's full-length mirror, though. (We reassured him that he really didn't look THAT fat.)

More Gerbil Action!

Oh, we're getting some personalities here and they're losing their creepiness. Though when I had them on Lucas's little table alone and they were running in all different directions and skidding up to the edges, I was afraid I might lose it. Rodents zipping around threatening to jump off the table and run through the house - aaaahhhh!

So who saw the movie Ben in 1976-ish? The one with the theme song sung by Michael Jackson with words like, "Ben, the 2 of us were meant to be together, but they don't understand how I can love a rat." Like that. The pivotal scene is where the kid has been forbidden to have Ben the rat by his parents, but his mom comes to kiss him goodnight and finds his bed covered in hundreds of Ben's friends - imagine the horror! She has a freak-out and starts tossing covers, and poor Ben gets maimed or something so the kid hates his parents and I was crying my eyes out with all the other girls watching it. Seems like it was at a sleepover at Mitzi's house or something.

I'll have to add Ben to my Blockbuster queue tonight!

Mad Cow and a Bag of Ice

Drew went on a campout Friday evening and was the Grubmaster, so he had a cooler full of food and I bought 2 bags of ice to put on it. Only 1 would fit, so I took the other bag to the meeting spot to see if anybody else needed it. Nobody else did, so I put it in the back of my SUV to take home and put in the freezer.

Sunday we have a very lazy day - I never left the house all weekend because the weather was yucky and I was enjoying my pajamas - but we decide to go to Target before we go pick Drew up. We get in my car and Dean exclaims, "Your car STINKS! What's in here?" Lucas echoes the sentiment. It's sort of a musty mildewy smell, and we get out to look in the back. Dean pulls out 2 empty plastic ice bags and looks perplexed. I slowly realize that I never took that 2nd bag out of my car, and it has now melted into the rear carpet. Sure enough, we pull out the piece of flooring that covers the spare tire, and it's dripping wet - soaked through. And it's been sitting in a nice warm garage all weekend, though luckily the highest temperature was in the 70's.

If you see me this week, you'll know why the kids and I are wearing coats with all the car windows down. And please forgive me if I smell like mildew.

I'm also reminded of Christmas Vacation where the gutter-ice breaks through the neighbors' window and destroys their room without a trace. And wasn't there an Edgar Allen Poe book with a similar plot?

Gerbil in a Ball

It's getting a little better with the gerbils. We had some good interactions last night and today - they took treats from our hands without so much biting, and Furry even sat in Lucas's hand while he pet (petted?) him. Furry volunteered to explore the house a little bit, but if you could see this video full-screen, you'd notice a little poo escaping from the ball on its last run. I didn't notice it till I watched the video - better go clean that up. These things are nasty!

Meet the Gerbils

We are pleased to introduce Furry and Junior. Furry is the wild one in the wheel and Junior is the one who is contemplating biting my finger. Furry is curious and full of energy and has flipped himself upside down in the wheel because he can run so fast. When he saw Jake the dog (who hasn't even smelled 2 gerbils in the house yet - what's up with that?) he had a little panic attack and stomped his back feet just like they said in the book! It looked like a temper tantrum with him jumping up and down rapidly. It was also accompanied by pee and poop - just what you want in a wheel when you're running for your life. (I didn't really want to pet or hold him after that.)

Junior is an evil little gerbil who is very antisocial and prefers to stay in his nest unless he sees a hand to bite. Now the bite is just tiny teeth against your skin - there's no puncture or blood (yet), but it causes Drew and me to yank our hands out rapidly, so Junior will one day find himself sailing across the room and slamming into a wall. Lucas, on the other hand, thinks it tickles and doesn't even twitch.

Now the boy at the pet store declared that gerbils are better than hamsters for little kids because they don't bite as much, they're less aggressive, and they sleep at night and play in the daytime. So far we've all been bitten at least once, and Lucas woke me up at 2 AM the first night because they were running on that damn wheel. So now they have an enforced bed time, because a giant rubber band is placed around the wheel to prevent it from turning (thank you, Dean!), thus allowing Lucas to sleep through the night.

Anyone with gerbil experience who can tell me if there ever comes a point where you can actually pick them up and play with them, feel free to offer advice. They're kind of getting creepier by the day!

Audiotape and 6th Grade Girls

I wish I had the audio to post - it's so much better than reading it. Janet and Amy and I had hours of fun one day with an old reel-to-reel tape recorder my dad had. You could record something then play it in reverse, speed it up to sound like a chipmunk, or slow it down. So much fun! The funny thing is that we chose to say stuff like "U-T-Rus" and "fallopian tube" then speed it up. After each word there were just gales of chipmunk laughter at how clever we were.

Then we wrote some jingles for common household products, which I would like to share with you now. This first one was originally a religious song about snow-white doves as far as I can remember, but we sang about Dove soap.

"On the wings of a snow white dove,
I was taken to my tub.
And there I found some Dove."

The chorus is "Dove...dove.....dovedovedovedove" and repeat.

The next was the real winner. I don't think Duffy Sausage was real - we always ate Jimmy Dean - but for some reason we sang about Duffy. Now one person is chanting "Duffy" in the background while the other sings, and the rhythm is sort of like a train on the tracks, if that makes any sense (I know it doesn't).

Duffy, duffy, duffy, duffy
Kill the pig, kill the pig, kill the pig, kill the pig.
Waaaah, waaaaah, waaaah, waaaaah
The pig's dead! The pig's dead!
Take-it-to-the-store, take-it-to-the-store (sung rapidly)
Eat the pig! Eat the pig!
Duffy, duffy, DUFFFF-EEEEEEE, DUFFF-EEEEEE!!!

All of that was in a minor chord till the last line when it changed to a major chord with beautiful harmony.

I think we wrote other jingles, but these were the only ones that came to mind at the time. And yeah, I get that it's really funny in my head, but loses a whole lot in print. Maybe one day I'll find that tape and play it for you. THEN you'll laugh!

Let's Wrap It Up

I'll get off that cancer kick - sorry 'bout that! Just to reassure everybody that it was a double-edged sword, it was the worst thing I've ever been through and I felt like my life ended (the first half of it anyway), but those times with my family were some of the best ones we ever had. We got together more than we would have and we didn't sweat any small stuff. We actually looked forward to tests and doctor visits because we knew it meant a get-together.

I just remembered a funny thing from the time the hospice chaplain came to meet us at my dad's house. She asked if we could all pray together, so we're all sitting in the den listening to her pray (more of a discussion with God, it was going on for quite a while), and Drew (4 at the time) says, "Excuse me." She says, "Yes, sweetheart, did you want to add something?" Drew says, "No ma'am, I pooted."

With stuff like that happening, how can you not laugh and enjoy the moment?