love confusing love

besides my husband being sort-of upset that i made the decision for the mice without him, becuz he was just getting to another solution as i was fucking feeding them to the chickens, i have only been met with the sweetest support and understanding. david came around quickly after my sobbing, and just gently teased me yesterday that no way are we having more kids, cuz he'd be afraid it would want milk and i'd just lose it and feed it to the chickens too. yeah. we are not having more kids anyways, but he's always looking for a reason to make it even more etched.

i spoke with our vet last night. he told me a few things that make me sure i'll do it differently if ever given the chance. i'll go with my gut, which i didn't really do on tuesday. i went with my fear. my gut was to raise them and even possibly keep a couple as pets. there are tons of articles i found about getting wild mice as babies and raising them as pets. we love pets. we love mice. the vet said he has never seen a case of the hantavirus in our area. in southern colorado he hears of it sometimes, and it's usually from someone cleaning out an abandoned cabin or basement with tons of feces. this is a vet who does house calls only and treats with homeopathics whenever possible. i like him and feel so lucky to have him help us with our animals. i asked him if he would let his children hold a baby mouse. he said he would, but he said, maybe he shouldn't, he can't be positive that it's always safe, but that that virus is just not something he worries about around here. he said he's had mice in his house though, and after not being able to get them out without killing, he and his wife killed them. it's just the baby thing. i can't stop picturing them. little babies drinking milk with hands wrapped around a fucking dropper. hands. f. f. f. i'm so sorry. the vet said i'd probably get another chance. maybe i just a few weeks, given the rate mice reproduce.

thanks to my bloggy friends who wrote me the sweetest replies to that last post. i know it was intense to read. gravely intense. thanks for not looking away.

what is so weird to me, is that yesterday, the day after feeding them to the chickens, i ate meat twice. i wanted it. my body, the animal in me who has no reason for what she feels, she just feels, wanted to eat the meat of another animal. god it's so weird. reverence. so much reverence for the animals we eat. so so so much. and tears.

i just can't makes sense. has anyone ever made sense of this? do the whales understand what they're doing when they eat big beautiful fish? do the mountain lions and fox understand when they eat our beloved pet cats and dogs and deer? hmmmmm.

can i move on? i can. and i come back. i'm gonna move on. make myself for a bit. cuz i have all these other pictures of the life we've lived recently.

folk's festival fun:






i must tell you that max decided manning the trash compost recycling area, near where our chairs were, was the best fun, and he sat there helping the volunteers for 5 hours i think. we couldn't pull him away. it was precious and weird and totally fine. he caught on quick to what goes in which bin and told people like a pro. cutie.



i love my knitting these days. and the new magic knitting bag zhi thrifted for me with her grandma. three generations of thrifters. although i will say i taught my mom how to thrift. she used to shop at places she couldn't afford when i was growing up, and i remember the stress of all that. i wish i'd known sooner, cuz it wasn't till college that i became friends with thrifters. drifters. thrifters. we are family. one of my best friend's sons was with us yesterday as i was dropping off some donations to a thrift store. he said, what? what is this store? i said THRIFT STORE. he was like, WHAT? i said THRIFT. i had to tell him what a thrift store was. i couldn't believe it. his mom is not a thrifter. i hang with non thrifters too. but if i have the chance, i will teach!





we are deep in the process of helping the kids who inherited bed wetting genes, learn how to wake up to pee even in the middle of deep deep sleep. it is intense. we are using the bedwetting alarm. zhi got trained in 1 month. she is an over achiever. that is faster than average. max is currently working through the process. it is hard work. i feel like i have a newborn again. waking up so many times a night to help a child out of and into underwear and a pullup. i am a big fan of the bed wetting alarm so far. my fingers are crossed for max's successsssssssssssss.









i've been running and i'm getting stronger and it is feeling so good. partly because i love these toe shoes.

yesterday, olive was carrying around this can full of fake pearls from a necklace she cut and saved the beads in the can. she was shaking it. it flew open and a hundred or so pearls went everywhere on the sidewalk. we stopped calmly and picked every single one up. it was oddly fun. to stop. stop. and not be stressed about it.

and in other wildlife news: we had this baby bull snake come into our house last week. david caught him. looking back on it, the snake was probably smelling some baby mice in the shoe closet by the front door. david used to have a pet snake, so he's really comfortable handling them. this snake was a sweetheart. it seemed to like being held.









it went right back outside.

and here's one of the resident rats. joe.

so there are some fun photos.

and here i am. in olive's cape that she donned upon me. i am ready to do some serious good for the world.