I Need Zoo Keepers

As you may know, I'm a bit....highstrung, shall we say. I'm also a magnet for madness and mayhem. Cassidy comes by her drama queen title naturally. So, while tonight's happenings are not really a surprise, it's just all a bit much given that it's Christmas time and my house is in it's usual state of messiness and chaos and I have eighteen thousand things to do tomorrow.

So, at twelve thirty, I decide that it's time to feed the rats and go to bed. So, I feed my boys and the foster boys and the bitey boys, then I head into Cass's room to feed my girls and the foster girls. The first thing I notice when I go in Cass's room is that Cera (the three-legged wonder dog) is, as usual, sitting at attention trying to get her tongue bitten for the eighteen thousandth time. Then I notice that the board that sits atop the foster girls cage preventing them from opening the cage and escaping is on the floor and one of the fosters is on top of, rather than inside of, the cage. I do a quick headcount and come up with seven foster girls, but no, that's not right....there's eight foster girls. Math isn't my strong suit, but ten times later with the same result and it's clear that only seven girls are left in the cage. So, I do the frantic search around the cage, around Cass's room and find nothing.

I head back out to the living room to decide what to do and what do I see but Rainbow, the fat white kitten inside the snake's enclosure. Wait...yup that's what I said, inside the snake's enclosure. The dumb cat had broken through the screen top and was sitting on the snake's hidey log. At this point, I about lost my shit, because what the hell am I going to put the snake in at twelve at night that will keep him safe from the cats and dogs and keep him from escaping and wandering into the nearest rat cage and getting eaten. I awaken Jamie and share the dilemma with her, and she remembers we have another terrarium on the porch.

Now, it's about thirty degrees outside, and it rained all last week, so when I go out to the porch to drain the six inches of rain water from the terrarium, what do I discover but that the lid is frozen in place. And I'm proud to say that I neither screamed nor cried when I made this thrilling discovery, but instead send Jamie out to do the dirty work. She brings it back in and I finally get it cleaned out and set up to house the snake.

So, now it's one thirty in the morning and I'm wide awake trying to figure out what to do about the missing rat. Assuming it hasn't already been eaten by Cera, it isn't going to last long what with the two dogs and four cats that live in this house. And I have to be up at my aunt's house at eight in the morning to wrap my neices' Christmas presents since we're doing presents tomorrow, but I have to take my cousin, her baby's daddy and my soon to be former sister in law down my friend Ron's tattoo studio by ten so they can all get tattoos and we can get back in time for dinner and presents. Oh, and the festivities are not only going to be attended by my soon to be former sister in law, but also my brother's new girlfriend, a Jewish girl, who I'm sure is perfectly nice though I've yet to meet her, but since my brother and his wife are still, after all, technically married and both in attendance it's bound to be a bit awkward...

And somehow, in amidst all this, I've got to find out from my sister and my other sister in law whether they think we should get a small gift of some kind for the new girlfriend. What is the gift etiquette, exactly, for your brother's Jewish girlfriend while his wife is also in attendance?

I'm hoping like hell to have the energy to attend the annual holiday party thrown by my dear friend Darcee, because while none of my friends is a poster child for sanity, they definitely have the edge this year over all the family insanity.

I think the little rat is on her own...





****Edited at 5:30 am to add that luckily for the little rat, though unluckily for me, the insomnia that has plagued me this past week has continued and I located and caught the little rodent and returned her to her cage with her sisters.