Monday, November 3, 2008

Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Eeeeewwww!

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.

First I look on the porch to find not one, not two, but yes... THREE dead mice, all neatly lined up. Charlie was busy apparently.

But then, Ooooh then. Lisey tells me that she thinks Charlie has a tick on his neck. So I take a look and see what might be a scrape? I take a closer look and as I am trying to get all the hair out of the way when it EXPLODES.

Charlie apparently had a bite on his neck that had abscessed. Pus was literally flowing out of it. It smelled absolutely putrid. I was trying to clean it up while at the same time trying to hold my breath and not barf. I got most of the nastiness out and then washed it as well as I could and just slathered the hell out of it with Neosporin.

I checked it out again this morning and it was still pretty damn nasty but at least it wasn't oozing everywhere. Ick ick ick.

I checked him all over and found another set of bites under his chin. They looked okay. I don't know what the hell Charlie tangled with, but I'd hate to see the other animal!!

Digging for fossils

Yesterday was my niece Kaylee's first birthday party. It was about two hours away, on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, so we decided to make a day of it. After the party was over, we drove a little further south to Calvert Cliffs. Calvert Cliffs is famous for the huge amount of fossils that can be found in the soft rocks. You can dig on the beach and take home whatever you find.

It's quite a walk from the lot to the beach - about 2 miles. The kids did great and had fun digging in the sand. The tide was high when we got there, so there wasn't a whole lotta beach to work with, but we found a few fossils. There were several impressive ones in the cliffs but they were too big to try to remove.

It was getting windy on the shore and starting to get dark, so we headed back up the trail. We didn't plan the timing very well and found ourselves walking back to the van in the dark. It was very hard to see and we almost missed one of the turns because we couldn't read the trail markers. But we all made it, tired and hungry, but with a bucket full of shells and fossils.

By the time we ate dinner and drove home, it was past 10:00. Lisey fell asleep in the van so I just put her right in bed. Marc was still wide awake so I let him watch TV for a little bit until he fell asleep too. We both ended up just sleeping in the basement, we were too tired to go back upstairs!

Today is a teacher inservice day, so Erik is working but I am home with the kids. We are all still in our jammies and it is wonderful!!