The week presented itself with an animal theme beginning with chickens and ending with a new guinea pig. Monday morning started with Boo looking up from her math and announcing, "There are chickens in our yard!" We live in an urban environment, where the only indication you have passed from one city to the next is the sign along the side of the road. Farm animals aren't exactly abounding around here, and yet there were two chickens walking around in my backyard. Later we would figure out that it was a rooster and hen when the male flew over a wall and tried to encourage his mate to join him. She tried once, failed, and spent the next half hour calling pitifully for him to return, while he crowed repeatedly demanding that she join him. Finally they both gave up and he went off to wander the neighborhood while she settled down under our orange tree. I called animal control to come get the birds, but since there isn't a "leash law" for chickens, no one would come out and pick them up. While I can see how it would be challenging to keep a leash on a chicken, I still think that they should not be allowed to freely roam. The amount of poop was staggering. By late evening the hen managed to get out of our yard and went searching for her mate. I'm hoping they found each other.
Tuesday was a routinely busy day until Bug came to me with one very sick guinea pig. Given my tender heart, and subsequent lack of rational thought, I called a vet and took Princess Fluffy into animal ER. They wanted to charge me close of $2,000 to attempt to save her, but couldn't make any reassurances that she wasn't beyond the point of no return. I love my daughter. I love animals. But $2000 was just too high a price tag. We ended up with a compromise of sorts where Princess Fluffy got to sit in an oxygen box until midnight (but not a minute later) and then was sent home with two different kinds of antibiotics and some feeding supplement. The total still came to over $200 dollars, but I just am too soft and couldn't just pick up the pig and walk out with my daughter wondering why I wouldn't help her baby. In the end Bug was very understanding of a financial balance we struck, which really impressed me, and took excellent care of Princess Fluffy. We were up until 2:30 that night, only going to bed when Bug felt that her pet had a chance to make it through the night. Princess Fluffy did hang on until Wednesday night while I was preparing dinner. Dinner was put on hold and we marched up the slope behind our house and buried our pet. Bug mourned for three days, and by Sunday was prepared to go out and get a new guinea pig, Princess Anne.
Actually, she wasn't really in mourning Friday and Saturday because she had a birthday party sleepover to host. She picked a "Fabulous Fashions" theme. The girls began the party with nail polish and colorful hair spray. After pizza they went in to put on a fashion show. I taped Christmas tree lights on the floor to mark out the runway and had picked up some mix and match things from Goodwill (ie: scarves and a leopard print dress). My husband was the photographer and they had a blast. Cake, presents, pinata, and then movies followed and I think they went to sleep around 1. And yes, I was exhausted and took a good nap on Sunday afternoon!
Oh, and just so you know, we did get some school work into the week. :) My favorite project this week was making a salt dough relief map of California. I found the directions here, (Weird, Unsocialized Homeschooler's site popped up at the top of my Google search!) and followed them pretty closely, excepting the clever use of a pizza box. I just didn't have the time/energy to go out and get one. And by the time the map was dry, Bug had decided she didn't have the time/energy to paint it. It was a lot of fun to make, and she really learned how to look at a topographical map and create a relief map from that information.
Boo started a new read aloud this week, The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I love this book. The poetic feel of some of the descriptions, the layers of emotions and motivations within characters, and the steady progression to the climax all capture me and I cheer out loud at the ending. Boo is beginning to share my passion for it, but didn't understand the bit about cautioning Kit to not swim in New England because everyone knows that "witches always float." We got into a discussion about the absurd "detection" methods applied in witch trials and then I was inspired to share the witch trial scene from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail. It got the point across without traumatizing the girls. Sometimes this can be a fine line to walk when teaching history.
So hopefully now one can see that this wasn't a week that lent itself to blogging and can forgive the tardiness of my post! :)
