Sigh...

I'd like to thank everyone for the prayers, positive thoughts, encouraging words, and expressed concern for Calypso.  It's been a long week.  After a couple days in the hospital on stronger antibiotics via IV she began to improve and the infection was brought under control.  She is now home and continuing to recover from that. However, the whole episode seems to have reactivated the mono she had at the beginning of the summer.  It has all left her feeling about as vigorous and robust as a piece of wilted lettuce.  Monday is the first day of her senior year...in a building which is under demolition construction.  It is sure to be chaos for everyone in that building.

God bless her, she so badly wants to do well this year and wanted to work hard at a job to earn money to finance her own after school goals.  I've been so proud of how she got her act together in the last half of the previous school year and how much initiative she showed in getting the two jobs she held this summer and in doing them well. I feel awful for her in this whole set back (now that the fear in the lack of answers we were getting earlier in the week has abated).  She's going to need to listen to her body though when she gets tired and let herself heal.  So continued prayers and good thoughts for her as she recovers would still be appreciated.

Last Monday at work I was getting understandably hysterical phone calls from Calypso before we figured out what was going on.  During her hospitalization I got another set of hysterical phone calls from my other two kids.  Just a couple days before Calypso became ill Diana had acquired a hamster...a hamster we shall call Houdini for her amazing ability to escape her cage or her ball...a hamster we would later come to discover was also pregnant.

On the day of the hysterical calls it seems she escaped...to the outdoors.  After realizing the rat Houdini had left the building Diana looked in the cage and discovered 7 babies.  Call #1 was the "What should I do?" call.  I said to put the cage on the patio and hope Houdini heard/smelled/was lured back by her babies.  That worked.  Panicked call #2 was the "What do we do next because the Internet says disturbed hamster mothers get upset and eat their babies?" call.  I have a child in the hospital and I still have some questions about her well being and what comes next for her.  To say I was less than concerned about 7 hamster offspring would be a fair assessment.  Diana was flipping out in the background about the violent deaths these things would face with their mother.  Isaac was tapping away on the computer trying to search out what to do for the mother and babies.  In the distance I could hear what I thought was the pained shrieking of neonate hamsters being eaten.

I suggested they take the whole lot of them back to the pet store and ask for advice.  They did and were advised to hand nurse the hamsters or find another nursing hamster.  This was reported to me during hysterical phone call #3 as Diana continued to panic over the potential for the babies being eaten and how she didn't want to take the bloodthirsty Houdini with her to school.  Having reached the end of my tolerance for these shenanigans I listed the facts for my unglued child.

1. I did not purchase Houdini as a pet, not did I sanction her acquisition.  this was a unilateral decision on Diana's part.
2. I was not assuming any responsibility for said hamster.
3. Diana has been a hunter since age 12 and has reached her hands into the steaming carcass of a large white tail deer buck to eviscerate it after having ended its life.
4. Seven newborn hamsters each roughly the size of my thumbnail seem far less problematic.
5. Did I mention I will have no part of caring for these things?
6. The circle of life/survival of the fittest comes into action here.  Put the babies with their mother and she will either nurse them or eat them, either way the problem is solved.
7. Just in case there is any question, these creatures are your responsibility NOT mine.  They will be returning to school with you.

Diana was less than  happy about the prospect of caring for eight hamsters in a dorm room.  "Yes, my dear, and what have we learned in this experience?"

Yes, between hospitalizations and rapidly multiplying hamsters (and I haven't even mentioned the football practice schedule and Isaac's continuing issues with his knee or various contributions of insanity from Mr. Lime because those are posts all by themselves) it would seem my life is a three ring circus.  I'm just not entirely sure if I am the ring master or merely a bewildered onlooker.

EDIT: (Monday 6:25 am in response to Hilary) The babies have survived thus far.  When my mother came to visit she wanted to see them so I took her into the room where they are being kept.  I dared to make eye contact with the new mother who looked pleadingly at me. Bad idea.  Must not be beguiled by those beady eyes....