So I guess I should give you fair warning. When I first saw that Mrs Kennedy had organized NaBloPoMo to encourage people to commit to making at least one post per day throughout November, I immediately signed up. I love a challenge. And frankly, I’m so grateful that she did organize this because prior to signing up I had actually gotten it into my head that maybe I should try NaNoWriMo this year, and god knows that trying to write an entire 50,000 word novel in November would have been setting myself up for failure. A blog post though? That I can do!

But I have to warn you – I’ve done other projects before that required writing something every day and I sometimes run out of ideas. If a lot is going on, it can be hard to sit down to write about it, but it’s often worse to have lots of time and nothing to write about. That’s where you come in. IF there’s something you’d like me to write about, let me know either in the comments or by using the nifty new contact form (see the top header). I won’t guarantee that I’ll do it, but if it’s not rude I probably will. It can include photo requests or just asking me questions.

A post a day from me – brace yourselves for the verbose and the weird. In the meantime, go convince my sister to sign up too. She could use it with all her sporadic posting lately.

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Know what makes me melt? A man who will play tea party with his daughters.

For about 15 minutes, Breanna wandered from room to room, babbling and clutching a copy of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to her chest. Every so often she would hold it up towards me, give it a couple of good shakes, and say something like, “ahhh dat dat habba mama!”

I’m so glad she’s showing signs of being literary at such a young age.

Meanwhile, Hayley played some games on Nick Jr on the computer and is now quietly playing with my old Sesame Street playset. It’s kind of fascinating to see her play with a computer – something which I never even touched until I was in grade 3 and never owned until I was a teenager (hell-o, TRS-80 with no storage capabilities!) – and then play with something that was mine when I was a little girl. Ancient history and modern times collide.

It’s a really crappy and neverending rainy day, but all things considered, not so bad after all. All it needs is one more cup of coffee.

Last night Breanna kept me up between 4:15 am and 6:45 am for reasons that are completely unknown to me. It could have been her teeth but she didn’t seem distressed, she just wasn’t interested in actually going back to sleep, despite the fact that I told her how great sleep would be.

Clearly I am tired now and I have no idea why I’m still up other than I’m biologically wired to be a night owl. Still, I decided it was time to hit the pillow so I was just doing my pre-bed round which include feeding the goldfish and the hamster (the cats are fed earlier because they would kill me otherwise).

I came incredibly close to putting hamster food into the fish bowl. Yes. Time for bed, indeed.

(And the saddest part is that it’s not the first time I’ve done something like that.)

I took the girls to the park today, and while I was watching Hayley on the slide and pushing them both on the swings, I was mentally composing an entry about obnoxious teenagers who ruin the park for all the kids. But by the time I got home I decided that I would write about that later or tomorrow because instead I thought I would write about how we left after only half an hour because we were chased by a fox.

Okay, well maybe “chased” is too strong of a term since that’s pretty agressive. It wasn’t actively chasing us but it got way too close for comfort.

There are woods around our park, but they used to be a lot bigger. In recent years they’ve put a fairly busy street through, and they’ve built up a lot of condos. The woods get smaller every year, and the animals are finding less and less space to call home. Which would explain why a fox came out of the woods.

I was at the opposite end of the park, with Hayley on the big girl swing and Breanna in the baby swing, taking turns pushing them. The empty stroller was off to the side, away from the sand. Halfway down the path, a woman had been sitting on a bench with her baby in a stroller. She got up and I guess she was going to go home, but she decided to follow the path all the way around the loop around the park. Once she was directly opposite to us, I glanced over and saw that she was waving at something. I thought it was a cat, but worried that maybe it was a dog.

She turned around and started walking briskly towards us. Once she was within speaking range, she said, “there’s a fox over there!” I looked over and sure enough, near the big slide where Hayley had been playing just five minutes earlier, a fox was wandering around and sniffing. It wasn’t a tiny one either, it was a really big fox.

That was odd enough and it was far enough away that I immediately turned on my camera to try to get a shot. However, it decided that perhaps we had some food or maybe it was just really social, and it started coming towards us. It walked really passively, not charging, but it sort of pranced which meant it was coming too close too fast for my tastes. I’m sure it was just hungry and with so many people living where animals used to live, it’s probably used to the association between humans and food, but it’s still pretty unusual for a fox to willingly approach humans and I really didn’t want to risk taking either of the kids – or myself – to get rabies shots in the event of a bite.

I immediately told Hayley to get down and come with me, then I yanked Breanna straight out the swing. Meanwhile, the other woman was taking her baby out of the stroller and holding him up in her arms. I didn’t even bother with my stroller since I would have had to walk towards the fox to get to it, and the five of us walked calmly towards the gate, keeping a close eye on the fox since it was still following us. Once we were pretty close to the gate, it finally turned and ran off into the woods again. At that point I jogged over and got the stroller but I didn’t stop to put Breanna in it until we were out of the park and on the sidewalk.

The other mother and I both agreed that that was plenty of adrenaline for one visit to the park. Hayley really wanted to go back to play a bit more now that it was gone, but I didn’t want to take any chances in case the fox decided to return.

I’ve seen the paw prints in the snow, and I’ve always known there were foxes living in the woods but even on our hikes, I have never seen one. I certainly wouldn’t have expected to be followed by one on a regular afternoon at the park!

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Hayley’s still too young, even at age four, to fully understand just how big of a deal it is that Breanna follows her everywhere. If Hayley’s playing in her room, Breanna wants to be in there too. If she’s playing with her dolls in the living room, Breanna wants one too.

If Hayley’s sitting in her chair, Breanna’s going to try hard to figure out the logistics of getting in the other one. It’s actually somewhat comical, because Breanna can sit in it, and she can get up out of it, but she hasn’t figured out how to turn around and sit back in it yet, so she tries to fling her leg up over the side and the back and gets frustrated with the whole process.

For Christmas this year, I really want our gift to the two of them to be one of those nifty mini couches that also unfolds into a bed. It wil be great for them to have a couch of their own for just lounging on, and it would be fun to unfold it and let them stretch out to watch a movie together.

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After breakfast was finished, I took the basket of big blocks and dumped it out onto the floor so that Breanna could play with them. She sat down and busied herself with them and immediately put all but two of them back in the basket. She cleaned up.

!!!

Whose child IS this?! And how soon can I teach her to do laundry and wash dishes?

Yesterday, the phone rang but I was busy changing a diaper so I didn’t get to it right away. When I looked afterwards, I saw it was our friend Dean. Figuring he was calling for George, I checked the messages so I could write it down for him. The message said he was actually calling for me and to please call him back when I got a chance.

Dean and I can talk about a lot of stuff but he doesn’t often specifically call me so I was curious. Thinking it was maybe about one of the shows that we both watch, I called him back.

Dean: So, do you want another cat?
Sherry: Noooooo. No.
Dean: Really?
Sherry: No, no cats.
Dean: Are you sure? Because I spoke to George earlier about it and he said yes.
Sherry: What?!
Dean: Yeah, he said yes, and he said to tell you to say yes too. He said it would be good for Hayley to have a pet she can enjoy.
Sherry: Really? Um. Well. Okay, well in that case, yes. The only reason I said no was because I thought George would kill me if he came home to another damn cat.

And then Dean arrived at our door less than an hour later. I never said a word to Hayley, and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head when a furry head poked out of Dean’s jacket when she went to hug him.

Apparently a kitten of roughly 3 or 4 months was abandoned but was otherwise in good shape, and although Dean loved her, Joanne is horribly allergic to cats and there was no way they could keep her. Had we actually said no, the next stop would have been the SPCA so Dean was very happy we took her in.

And that’s how we wound up with Angel.

Hayley spent most of the day playing with her, alternating between tossing aluminum foil balls and just chasing Angel (and then being chased right back). She also repeatedly showed her where her litter box was and where the bed we made for her was, and worrying about whether she needed to eat.

It is so nice, after having an extremely anti-social cat and pets that aren’t really interactive like the hamster and the fish, to finally have a pet that Hayley can really touch and hold and play with.

Then, Angel took a little nap beside her new friend. Don’t let the cuteness fool you, only the one with the pointy ears actually slept.

Hayley was completely incapable of focusing on anything but that cat. She barely ate any lunch and we had to bribe her with a chocolate dessert to get her to eat some supper. Every breath and every thought was revolved around Angel. I think she’s in love.

And as for me, with all my grumbling about NO MORE PETS on days when I’m tired of cleaning litter boxes and hamster cages and fish bowls, I have not so much of an iron will as a soggy paper will because it takes so little to convince me that yes, another pet would be dandy.

When I was about 16 years old, I found a beautiful grey kitten in my grandmother’s yard. I snuck him into the woodshed and fed him for a full day before I finally confessed that I had him. We couldn’t keep him because our cat was really old and not likely to accept the presence of a new cat in his world. My aunt Ellie, my favorite aunt, was a bit of a crazy cat lady. She always had at least two cats, but often she’d have four or more; she lived out in the country with lots of yard space and it was easy to accumulate them. She was notorious for taking them in. I figured I’d call her and ask her to take my little friend Smokey.

She said she just couldn’t take another cat because she had four at the time. She did offer to take him down to the pet store, the closest thing a small town had to an SPCA, and they would try to sell him. When she showed up the next day to get him, I immediately burst into heart-wrenching sobs as I handed him over to her. She took one look at me, one look at the kitten, and said, “Oh for GOD’S SAKE, I’LL KEEP HIM.”

I’ve often said that from my aunt I inherited a love and talent for cooking, the ability to curse a blue streak, and a fondness for beer. Clearly I also inherited a soft heart for animals under my oh-so-phony tough exterior.

Thanks to Breanna, things I’ve found in the fridge of the toy kitchen in the past seven days:

• The cordless phone
• The other cordless phone
• The remote for the television
• The remote for the old DVD player that no longer works
• The top to a plastic pitcher
• One of George’s clean socks
• One of George’s recently worn socks
• A t-shirt from the pile of clean laundry I left on Hayley’s bed to put away
• Three Rice Krispies
• A sippy cup
• Elmo
• Two zebras and Noah’s wife from the Little People Noah’s Ark set

I wish I knew what she was thinking as she hoardes all these things. Thank GOD I saw her actually doing it with the remote for our TV or I would have driven myself completely insane trying to find it that night.

Please excuse any chaos (how apropos!) here at Chaos Theory while I implement something new.