a dream deferred. plus: chocolate milk and dead snakes!

though thus far i had neglected to mention it, i WAS going to do the jeopardy online test tonight. i was really excited as being on jeopardy has been a long-held nerd fantasy for me.

well, life happened and some family of joel's came into town and due to my work and joel's the only time we could see them was tonight - the night of the test.

i'm pretty fucking disappointed, but i'll live.

so, now i wait til next year. oh well, after watching this week, i got really nervous about it as the categories were a little difficult - i mean a whole category of questions about haile selassie, really? what's up with that?

oh well.

talked to my sister tonight. she is very excited about coming down to visit. she and her man are planning to come for my birthday! how awesome. i just hope we're out of the poor house by then and can really get into some activities with them. i'm already staking out fun low-budget ideas to entertain them, but if any locals have suggestions, i'm all ears. my sister's boyfriend is 23 and has never been on a plane before. this ought to be good.

things have been interesting lately. it's a whole new world when you spend your days with children. on saturday, i looked after shark's kids [of diarrhea diary fame] and they gave me a run for the money indeed. gavin was in classic form, hurling things like pez dispensers and shoes across the room. adelaide spilled chocolate milk down the front of a white t-shirt which i hope is salvagable after its two runs through the washing machine. chocolate milk came into play later that day after gavin knocked a cupfull off a table and into a pair of addie's shoes.

we also had a run in with a snake in the house. i was handcrafting lunch out of peanut butter and jam when i heard addie's trembling little voice coming from the hallway informing me there was a snake in the house. i admit, even though i live in florida now, i didn't think much of it at first. i thought perhaps it was a worm or large slug or something.

nope, it was indeed a snake. gavin asked it was a wild animal and thankfully had someone smart teaching him that wild animals should be treated carefully - the kids were very good about listening when i asked them to stay away from it. at first i wasn't sure if it was alive and wasn't sure what to do. however, as i was processing my thoughts, one of the sharkeys' cats, jenny, came into the hallway and began to bat the snake and toss it around. the snake made no effort to dissuade jenny from her play and i noticed a wound towards its back end.

thank god tonya has a kitchen well-stocked with items from her work with pampered chef! i found a pair of rubber-tipped tongs and carefully picked up the snake. there was no response or movement. i breathed a sigh of relief. after gavin grabbed my shoes from the front door, i asked the children if they knew where the family's trashcans were outside. unfortunately, no. after looking around the side of the house, still carrying the snake with the tongs, i decided i couldn't just leave it out in the backyard for jenny to simply retrieve and startle us all over again. i decided to toss it over the fence into the front yard. at least this way, if the snake came back to haunt us, it was gonna take jenny a heck of a lot longer to find it.

tonya informed me later that jenny has a habit of presenting the household with such gifts, though this was the first snake. usually, she brings in lizards. i suppose someone likes me.

it amazes me how i could handle it so calmly. if something similar had happened to me in my own home, i don't know if i would deal with it without panic. hell, i scream like a little girl if i see a cockroach in my house. i guess when you have other people who depend on you to take care of things, it's just easier to suck it up and deal with it.