Slow Days

Sometimes I just need a break. Last week was one of those times. I would have warned you all that I was going to take a hiatus if I had known I was about to need one. Life is occasionally quite impromptu and you know, as in life, so in blogging.

The weekend was exciting. Crazy, gorgeous dump of snow, cancelled birthday parties and then a frantic/worried/bizarre day which we spent huddled over our sweet late-guinea pig Jenny. I never could have imagined that it would be possible to be obsessing worriedly for an entire day over the aliveness or deadness of an animal but that's what happened. They are so very small and she was clearly very sick or else dead....we were rather avidly hopeful. Alas, by this morning I could firmly say she was gone and we said our goodbyes including a custom dirge, Nib wrote and sang "Jenny, come back your friend, you are gone away Jenny, poor, poor Jenny, she did die." and a little postmortem portrait tribute from Dee complete with little stick figure legs poking out of her tiny crayoned body.

This morning after we dropped A off at work the boys and I marched bravely to the pet store after praying for a new friend for our remaining, lonely Sarsparilla. It broke my heart this morning to be greeted by silence instead of the usual friend whistles and tweets and find Sarsparilla moping in her little wooden shelter at one end of the cage. We are the proud new owners of a fluffy black and white piggy and I am pleased to tell you that Sarsparilla appears to have taken her in and is already back to making some of her usual noises. We've named the new little fluff ball Chamomile.

Pom has finally pushed through his two, giant from teeth and is the proud owner of opposing ivories. I heard him gritting them together in that horrible, scraping way all babies experiment with just this morning. Heh. I hope his sleep and irritability improve a bit now that he has put the big chompers behind him for a while. Maybe his body will give him a rest for having started a bit early.

Its slow times at our house. Planning the mythical vegetable garden, roasting beef slow and slower in the oven, drinking vats of milky tea, snuggling the baby and forcing the trimmings from the fruit trees in the yard as I slowly hack away at pruning.