With no end of things I could write about, Spidey doesn't seem like the best choice, but all the choice subjects are probably too much to take on in a place I don't come often.  Therefore, Spidey it will be.

This won't be a gush about Toby McGuire or a treatise on Stan Lee comics.  The Spidey in my life isn't Spiderman, but is named for him.  What else would you call a pet mammal who can scale walls?    The albino rat was the first animal my niece and I looked in on one August afternoon when we went to volunteer at the animal shelter and he looked meek and scared in his little glass cell.  I thought of pleasant Edgar and felt pity for the young red-eyed creature.  Still, Tilly and I had cats to socialize with, dogs to walk, and some rabbits to liberate for a little while and off we went. 

But little white rat stayed in my thoughts and I told my eldest son about him when I got home.  Mack was adamant that he be saved and so he was.   After visiting him every day for a week, I got him and a pile of rat-habitat for Mack as a birthday present.  When I went to pick little White Rat up, the humane society woman (who was understandably glad to see him out the door) told me that he had been a stray.  A stray rat?  Um, really?

"Oh, yes," she replied.  "A family opened up their front door one morning and found him sunning himself on their front porch.  Maybe he escaped from a science lab and he's a rat genius."

"Or maybe he killed all the scientists and got out," I thought but that didn't seem likely, so he was put in his new padded pet carrier and brought home. 

Since Edgar was sick with something we weren't sure wasn't contagious, the animals were kept in seperate areas in the house, inadequate isolation from one another, but the best we could do.  Edgar didn't get the still-nameless little rat sick.  Every time he was taken out of his cage he would wow us with his athleticism and after he ran around the walls of Mack's room to avoid being put in his cage every dignified name we were considering for him was dropped and he became Spidey.

More tomorrow.

Having two animals of the same type in your family is the best way to learn that animals have different personalities, just as we human animals do.  It didn't take long to learn that the little white rat-let didn't trust people the way that good-natured Edgar did.  It's as if someone told the Spidey that people were a different species or something.  While he'd been lonely in his glass tank at the shelter the he didn't seem to mind being taken out for some social time, even letting me pet him, but here at home with more deluxe digs, he got an attitude and while he would still scale the wire walls of the cage to deign to accept a cracker or a grape, he wasn't much for visiting.  We know to accept each other in this household, so with no hard feelings, we let him keep his distance. 

It's not that we didn't try to get him used to people.  When he'd be let out on the couch to stretch his legs move around in the evening, sometimes I'd sit on the couch with him.  No pressure to socialize, you know, just two of God's creatures sharing some prime real estate in the house.  Everything would be fine for a little while and Spidey would even come closer.  And closer.  And then he'd nip my arm or bite my finger.  After he drew blood one evening, our interactions were conducted with me standing next to the couch or from opposite sides of the wire cage walls.  He still enjoyed his couch time and I found other places to sit.  It wasn't perfect, but it worked and that was good enough for us.

Mack is the one who takes primary care of Spidey, letting him out of his cage in the evening and getting him back into it before their bedtime.  Mack is very responsible, but unlike Spidey, Mack is only human.  I can prove it.  Read on.

I was making a lovely pot of coffee on a lovely Saturday morning when Mack came in with a long face.  I kept putzing around with the grounds and the kettle and the pot, so he cleared his throat before he spoke.

"I have to tell you something," he began. When he clears his throat, I know this is going to be Something Significant and his "I have to tell you something" classified that the Significant Something wasn't something I was likely to be happy about.
However, I never expected what followed.

"I fell asleep."

He continued with an "I'm sorry", though he didn't have to apologize for falling asleep.  Heck, I've been known to fall asleep myself sometimes.  So I was confused until his next sentence.
"And I left Spidey out on the couch."

Yikes! That adventurer, left out on the couch for along night--he wouldn't have stayed on the couch, he would have leapt over to the table, then to the chair, then on the floor, and then
and then where? Where was the bloodthirsty sharp-toothed beastie? 

So I asked Mack that.  "I put him back in his cage," he assured me. "He stayed on the couch all night."

Hmmm. Then what could the problem be?, I wondered. Ratty out, ratty in, no harm done, right? Right?

Oh I know better than that. There's always a problem.

And suddenly I just knew why his staying out all night inspired such remorse in Mack. All night on that big long comfortable couch that matches the other one, that has the wonderfully comfortable armchair with the cover that looks so good with the both of them.
That rat--how I hate to call him a rat after he'd done such an ignoble deed!--that rodent! had chewed and shredded any part of the couch that Mack hadn't covered with a sheet. The couch has raggedy, nay! ratty! holes on the arms, on the back, long runs of gnawed upholstery streamers.

Welcome to my lovely home.

Wanted:  Couch Chewer

Approach with caution!

It's a dreadful cramped state of spirit I'm in these days.  I'm blind to the pretty decorations of the season that I assume are around me and anyone singing a dippy-happy-joyous Christmas carol can only be simpleminded.  It's not that I am insensible about the approaching mega-holiday.  Oh no indeed, I've got a sheaf of to do lists to drag myself through and drag myself through them I will because it's My Job to Make a Happy Christmas Here.

I've got it bad, alright, a case of Christmas Drear.  As much as I'd like to just wallow in it, I'm quite sure that doing that won't let anyone have a good day, much less a merry one.  As I said, it's My Job to Make a Happy Christmas Here and drear-wallowing will ruin the season.

Therefor I will identify one (1!) act of goodwill towards someone and I will perform that act.  It's got to be bigger than dropping cash in a bell-ringer's begging kettle.   I'm seizing up in a cramp at just the thought of extending myself.  Gaw!  One more thing to do.

Rrrrrr.

I doubt I'll be able to find the opportunity to treat my case of Sour Grinch-hood today.  It started snowing before I woke up and it doesn't look like I'll be going anywhere today.  Luckily, the Christmas shopping has been going, if not well, then at least going and I can take today off from retail. 

I sure would like to get rid of the grinch in me, though.

The flakes fell without stopping. 

I was listening to Christmas carols yesterday, trying to pump up that ho ho ho, and I was singing along with them, absentmindedly and sort of under my breath.   Suddenly I realized that while the song that was playing on iTunes was "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas", I had been in fact singing, "I'm dealing with a white Christmas". 

I found that pretty funny as well as being very true.

This doesn't begin to describe it.

'tis the day before Christmas Eve and all through the house there's trouble a'stirring.

And what better subject for a blog rant than Christmas gone wrong?  As I write this, I'm taking a brief break from being sick in bed--and sick in other parts of the house as well, so "nearly confined to bed with sickness" would be a better term.  The "nearly" is included just to keep the bedding clean.   I will not be going to pick sweet Jean up at the station, but someone will.  When that will happen is unclear--her bus is stuck in a blizzard just halfway between Minneapolis and here.  She was to arrive in twenty-five minutes and we're expecting her to be at least three hours late.

My nephew's mother has taken to calling me with loony accusations late at night since she's gotten back in the area from rehab.  She calls too late, I try to be reasonable and listen to her and then the outrageous raving begins.  I refer her to the social worker with her concerns and tell her it's too late at night to get into things.  Last call my civility shattered and I snarled, "Do you really want to get into this with me?" which made her hang up on me, not that I'm objecting to her lack of manners in forgetting to wish me sweet dreams before she sent the crash of receiver my way.   We go back a long way, that woman and I, and I don't fall for a snow job as easily as a MegaBus is delayed by a blizzard.  I trust that the rehab place has given her resources to call on from a middle of a midnight muddle.  Taking care of my nephew is my job, not taking care of his mother.

Another major change has placed itself on me to adjust to and it's worn me out as well, though I've slept more than anyone who's this side of her first birthday should ever sleep.  I know the sleep is the shelter I'm hiding in but now that I'm looking at final preparations for the holidays, using that sleeptime for other things would have been a good idea.

And then I got on the computer to whine and I've seen stories and photos of people who truly are in sad situations where there seems to be no hope for a good outcome.  I won't say that the things that have worn me out are insignificant;  I wouldn't let myself get knocked down by trifling things.   But even here alone on Christmas Eve, with the worry that Rose is old and frail and may not be there next year to open her house to those of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and those two hyperhappy golden retrievers who can make it, I really will know that I am luckier than I could deserve to be.