scurrying through the penthouse

Finally. It’s taken almost a week-and-a-half, but the good news is that we have two additions to North Park Drive: Jefferson and Biscuit. Rats.

X visualized her youth and drew the schematics for the four-level condo that her hamsters populated in her Gill, Mass youth. The boys needed some pets and hamsters are apparently neat, tidy, and easy enough to manage. This led to two trips to Home Depot, one by X and one by me, that eventually harvested the needed wood and screen mesh. Since you asked, I’ll tell you: Home Depot in Arlington sucks the absolute life out of you. The service is horrible, the store is horrible, the parking lot is horrible, the street it’s located on is hell. Put all that together in a blender and figure just how much fun we had getting the pieces gathered. Everything was leaning against the dining room wall on Saturday morning when Laurel and I headed for the cherry blossoms and X headed to the Law Center to study. The boys stayed home with Corey and he put the whole pad together in about an hour; it was perfect. (The Zapruder situation that involves Henry's hand and a staple gun is forthcomeing.) Exactly how my girlfriend gets people to do things for her with such ease is an entire sociological study yet to be done. When everyone congregated back home in the afternoon we decided to set off to PetCo to browse the small animal department. We examined and asked about pygmy hamsters, hamsters, gerbils (not allowed per X), mice, guinea pigs, and rats. They had two males, one light brown (Biscuit) and one almost black (Jefferson). X convinced the boys and girl that rats are actually quite smart, very trainable, and much like dogs…and I generally agree at this point. They’re cute and clearly smart enough to learn tricks and rules so I think it will work out well in the end. I will say that they aren’t as neat and tidy as hamsters. You can think about that. Here’s the crowd watching the rats on day #1…just like Laura Ingalls and her first radio.



T.