Mental Sampler 6

Truman has pneumonia.  Remember a few weeks ago when he had a respiratory infection, and the sneezing didn’t go away with the antibiotics so I tried changing to a 100% more delicious bedding?  On Thursday he started wheezing again, so I took him back to the vet for chest x-rays.  One lung is completely filled with fluid, and they needed to give him oxygen.

(What does a guinea pig look like on oxygen, my friend asked.  I don’t know.  They wouldn’t let me go back there.  Maybe because I was crying.)

Pneumonia is better than cancer, which was the other idea they were entertaining.  I felt sick the ride out to the vet, but she reassured me that the fact that his appetite and personality are normal is a good sign.  He’s on another course of antibiotics.

She also told me (not to brag) that he is the sweetest, most easy-going guinea pig in the world, and that he is quite the little lover.  I’m assuming she meant that in the platonic, loving sense of the term.  He is a little lover.  The Wolvog dryly informed the vet that Truman is my third child.  She gave a nervous laugh, thinking he was joking, but the kids stared at her, hard.

He is my sweet baby boy.  And hopefully he’ll be better soon.

*******

Josh fixed our freezer.  We had an appointment for someone to come over and fix it (the freezer drain was clogged with ice), but I looked up instructions online and wanted to try it ourselves.  So after a day of guinea pig chest x-rays, we emptied the freezer, unplugged the machine, and spent a half hour trying to figure out how to remove the back so we could get at the drain.

It took about an hour to take everything apart, clean it out with hot water, and put everything back together.

The freezer is totally quiet.

I called to cancel the service appointment.  When the guy answering the phone asked me why, I crowed, “because we fixed it ourselves!”  He was not nearly excited enough.  So I said it several more times.  He still didn’t show proper excitement.  Then I gave up.  And I’ll say it to you:

We fixed it ourselves!

*******

The twins are huge fans of Welcome to Night Vale.  But imagine their horror when signs went up around the neighbourhood announcing a Street Cleaning Day.  The ChickieNob immediately shrieked, “run, run, stay calm, run!”

This is the episode:

Run!

*******

Someone erected a small cross on the side of the road near our house.  I would have missed it if the kids weren’t in camp; it’s not a direction I normally drive.  The cross is gone.  Or, rather, it’s on its side in the grass.  I sometimes think about stopping my car and setting it back up except I don’t know why it’s there.

The cross doesn’t look like other crosses that sometimes mark the place where a car crashed.  There are no flowers, no teddy bears, no neat white wooden cross purchased at a craft store.

This cross is made out of sticks and the base is a styrofoam block painted black.  There is black fabric draped over the crossed sticks.

I wonder who put it there and why.  And why they haven’t returned to set it upright again.  Or how it got knocked down in the first place.

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing.