Day in the Life of an Idiot

Do you ever have those moments when you realize just how strange you are?

Yesterday started out kind of rough.  I'll admit it.  I'm having a bit of a mid-life crisis.  (Okay, I prefer not to think of this as a mid-life crises, since at 40 that would mean I need to check out by 80.  I think I'd rather have my mid-life crisis at 60, so I can see the brigher side of 120.)  Anyway, my crisis revolves around this peice of horrific math:  having a four year old at my age, means I'm TEN TIMES his age.  Yesterday, when he woke up at 5:30 AM and I'd just driven those nine and a half-adding-years-to-my-face hours, I thought, "Man, today is going to suck."

I started out birthday observed a bit tense and grumpy (plus, I may be hormonal.  I don't keep very good track, so I'm just kind of guessing here.)

So what did I do to cheer myself up?  We got a garden slug.




Okay, I'm not so foolish as to have paid for the slug.  Mason and I found it while we went for our usual morning walk near Cafe Amore.  It was crawling on the sidewalk.  Man, it was a big 'un, too.  Mason and I picked it up, watched it's eye-stalks poke out and we admired it for several minutes, and then I said, "Let's take it home and give it a nice house."  

It, of course, would have been happy in a mason jar, but what I did I do?  I went to PetSmart and dropped $30 on a terrarium. The terrarium was originally set up for a lizard, but we put in dirt, leaves, a piece of rotten pumpkin (from the compost), and a couple of live parsley plants rescued from the garden as well (plus some earthworm stow-aways).  It looks lovely, actually.  We have it set up where Mason can monitor the temperature inside the terrarium, add moisture (there's even a hydrometer), and generally watch the slug.... sit there.  It doesn't move a lot.  In fact, several times we've thought it was dead.  I guess this is where the term "sluggish" comes from.  However, it's cool to have a terrarium.  As I told Shawn, this way we have a ready-made home for any other outdoor critters we might catch.  She seemed less than enthused by this prospect.

It made my day, however.

Happy birthday to me --  me and my slug.