The Winds of Change....

Yeesh. I hate Unnecessary Drama, but that title summed up our recent days nicely. Over the Labor Day weekend, we tried to soak up the last few days of summer. School starts tomorrow. NC2 will be in 4th grade and BC will be in 2nd. The girls start next week. We spent Saturday at the beach....along with 4000 of our closest friends. I haven't seen the beach that crowded in a loooong time. On Sunday, we drove 50 miles out east to adopt this sweet little girl and, after much discussion, named her Fiona. She is a guinea pig...yeah, you read that correctly. I have a guinea pig. See, we've had a cat. Her name was Ruso and she lived to be 10 years old....she was a temperamental snot who hated everyone but me and peed on our bed while we were away on vacation one year.

Imagine you've been away on an awesome vacation for 2 weeks (with the kids...and hello? that's not really a vacation anyway). You all fly back home, unpack, sort the mail, do a quick house cleaning (how exactly does a house get so dirty if NO ONE IS THERE?), eat supper, and get the kids to bed. By now it's about 11pm and you're dreaming of falling into your very own comfy bed with your very own comfy pillows except when you do exactly that, you discover that tell-tale ammonia smell. EEEWWWWW!!!! That friggin' cat PEED right between the pillows! Luckily for her, we were able to change the bedding and flip the mattress....and when we went on vacation the following year, we closed all of the bedroom doors and covered the furniture.

Now where was I? Oh yes....we've also had a dog. I don't really have words to describe Page or how much we miss her. She was a sweet, saintly bulldog who lived with us for 10 years before cancer took her away last August. We will never again see a dog as good and kind as she was. Although I have a serious case of doggie-fever, I know that we don't have the time to properly train and care for a dog. Plus? I can't imagine that there is any dog in existence that can measure up to our Pagie.

So we had the opportunity to piggysit a guniea pig this past month. Hmm...maybe this is an option? Small cage...no walking...no giant poopoo to pick up...no urinating on the furniture. We did lots of research on the internet and discovered guinea pigs are pretty easy to care for. We then found a small animal rescue service here on Long Island named Katie's Critters. When I contacted them, Wendy (the owner of the rescue service) told me she had a couple of pigs in residence that might work for us....and that's how we got Fiona.

Wendy told us that she's a cuddly little girl but she's blind in one eye. When I saw her snuggle up on James' chest, I knew she was the one for us. She had a rough first day...I found myself hoping that she's also deaf. "CAN I HOLD HER?" "NO! YOU ALREADY GOT TO HOLD HER!" "OW! STOP PUSHING ME!" "YOU'RE THTUPID!" (Julia can't say her "s" yet.)

Once the kids went to bed, she came out of hiding several times to eat and investigate her surroundings. As of now, she's settling in nicely. I've instituted a 5-minute rule...they each get a turn holding her for 5 minutes. After they've all had a turn, she goes back into her cage to recover from all of the affection. I'm toying with the idea of putting a Xanax in her food dish...we'll see how things pan out. Once everyone is back in school, she'll have some peace and quiet during the day.

As for Monday, I spent a good part of the day setting up my blog. I'm still grinning from ear to ear about this endeavor. I grinned even harder when I discovered later in the day that I had a "follower". Assuming it was my friend, Krissy, I decided to check it out so I could thank her....turns out it wasn't Krissy. It was my hubs! Is it weird that I got a little teary? He is the king of being romantic without realizing that he's being romantic. A dozen roses? Never. It's been more than 10 years since I've seen that and I promise you that it's fine with me. Roses die but I will forever remember that he took the time to be my biggest fan. (Thanks, babe. Miles and miles...)