At Least it Didn't Rain

The Boy's birthday was last week and he wanted to celebrate in typical fashion: a dinner of veggie burgers, broccoli, and playing lots of Scrabble. Isn't that what all 8-year-olds want to do on their birthdays? Oh wait, no that's what most 80-year-olds want to do on their birthday. What can I say? The kid has the interests and tastes of a senior citizen. In fact, when he was six his Christmas list included slippers, a subscription "to that newspaper that Granddad gets" (The New York Times), and a deck of playing cards. One of my friends "adopted" an elderly man at a local retirement home and his Christmas wish list was nearly identical to the Boy's.

Thank goodness he spared me for his friend birthday party this year and I didn't have to come up with ideas for a "Canadian" party (read all about it here). He wanted a baseball party where he and his friends actually played baseball. Considering that last year's party involved renting a snow-making machine, baseball was a pretty easy assignment.

I have to admit, snow in August was pretty cool. 

I reserved a field at a local park and prayed that it wouldn't rain because my plan B was...well, to be honest, there never really was a plan B. I obsessively checked the forecast starting ten days out and was relieved that despite having a ton of rain this summer, Sunday which was party day, was supposed to be hot and sunny with only a slight chance of rain.

Meanwhile, (because God forbid I just work on one thing at a time), I was making arrangements to return our Gerbil Exchange Student, Ella Cookie, to the Baby's former preschool teacher. Ella Cookie has been living with us since the end of May and it was time to say farewell.

The Baby's teacher and I exchanged several emails regarding arrangements for Ella Cookie and it was decided that another teacher at the school who lives on our street would pick up Ella Cookie today (Monday) and take him to school. Yeah! Not that Ella Cookie hasn't been a good guest, but I'm ready to have the enormous glass fish tank full of rodent accouterments out of our study.

So, early Sunday morning I went into the study and saw that Ella Cookie was lying very still on the side of the tank. Having watched the BrainPOP video discussed here, I was pretty sure that Ella Cookie was not sleeping. Although there were no flies, she looked pretty, well, dead.

I was conflicted. In fact, I had three thoughts running through my head simultaneously: 1. I'm sad that Ella Cookie is dead, 2. What am I going to say to the kids? 3. Why the fuck couldn't it have lived one more fucking day so I didn't have to deal with this.