A 36-year-old female, not requiring therapy at this time.

I have had a great week.








Truly.

Amazing.

I feel like gloating.

We hatched our first morph! If you really, really want to know some basic info about what a normal ball python is and what a morph ball python is, I made a campy little page. It started out because my boss is interested in all my critters. I told her we had babies pipping and how excited we were to get to the morphs, and she asked me what a morph was. So, knowing pictures are hard to upload in a document, I made this little page: Scaly Critters. Enjoy, if that's your interest. Joni, I have other conversation topics below. We went 50/50 (the expected odds) for our black pastel/normal pastel pairing. Gideon is a daddy!


















Also, my wonderful boss sent me my own copy of the WebMD Blue Book for our area. It's an amazing tool when you have to send letters and carbon copies. This one is the large print version (yay).

KitKat's out for the summer, ManCub has one hour left (yeah, they get Memorial Day off and HAVE to attend school for the hour on Tuesday), and Tiger's Eye has finals...and my sisters and my mother are helping him. Awesome, yes? His study guides are almost completely finished, and I totally amazed everyone with my skills for Google by finding the "largest battle of 1812" by changing "largest" to "biggest" and it pulled it right up. For some reason, although I pay substantial book fees to the high school, they collected their books and wouldn't let them have them for studying for finals. Oh, the answer is New Orleans and, coincidentally, the biggest battle was fought after the treaty was signed.

Mom had surgery to get fluid out of her shoulder, and it went just fine. I made it to the hospital right before they took her in, ate lunch with KitKat and Squitch, but had worked nights and couldn't stay for the duration. She felt good enough to help Tiger's Eye with his study guides (I hope the pain pills made her good and mean), and that is so good. So, big thank you to my mom and my sisters for helping me. It feels so good to have backup!

I have a recipe for chocolate cake I'm dying to make. I made ekmek (Turkish bread) and, although I doubt it will be happening again any time soon, I had a little taste of childhood. It took four days to set up, eight minutes to knead, a few punches, and then another three minutes to knead. Like I said, it's probably not going to happen again any time soon. I have a sourdough recipe, though, on the printer, and ManCub had so much fun with the ekmek that he swears he'll help me keep the sourdough tamed.

We shall see. I hope it freezes well.

We got our stimulus check. I can get a new crock pot, which is great, because it's pathetic that I darn near needed a shrink to cope with its loss. I think I'll overcompensate by getting one with a timer. I have to be careful on bells and whistles or we're going to stimulate our stimulus into nonexistence.

Oh, another good thing: The kids' computer is, well, crap. We can't install a word processor on it, but they can surf the net and type in word pad and attach it and I can format and...and...

Google documents. Why oh why didn't I think of this before? My little writer can stop fussing at me now. Not only is it backed up, a computer crash won't end her creativity streak.

I can't even think of any bad stuff off the top of my head. My hands are tired from kneading dough and chronically tired from typing. That would be the biggie...but...but...but...I found out that wrapping my forearms in Ace bandages for a while makes a big, big difference.

Wow. Even my clouds have silver linings!

Critter heartbreak

See here first.

Today, I posted this on the forums at ball-pythons.net. If anyone has additional input from the blogging world, we'd like to have it:

I've been searching for a while now and coming up empty. We had a clutch of four eggs. When the first one pipped, one of the other eggs started to swell. It was a perfect egg before. Within hours of the first egg pipping, the indentations totally filled out, and the white of the shell disappeared, leaving it completely transparent. At this point, the snake could be seen inside, perfectly developed, but motionless. The bloated egg continued to sweat, while the surrounding eggs remained indented and unaffected.

By the time the other little ones pipped, this egg looked like a water balloon, only minimally larger at this point, but hub cut the egg open to reveal a perfectly formed, same size as its siblings, but dead baby. Heartwrenching.

What happened? None of the eggs was pre-cut. The egg was fine. We candled them and detected movement in all eggs in the clutch before the first one pipped. Within an hour or two after the first pip from another egg, this egg just filled with fluid, rounded out, and did the things mentioned above.

The rest of the clutch looks fine, although they're still pipped. We're not messing with them unless there is a danger posed by the egg remnants from the bloated egg.

Any help is much appreciated.

This is our fist clutch of the year. It's absolutely heartbreaking. The one that didn't make it had a beautiful pattern. The albino didn't prove out, but she gave off some very aberrant patterns to her offspring, and to lose one so close to the end is just hard. No other way to put it.

So, if you're a ball python enthusiast and you've ever had something like this happen, please let us know. I can't find anything on the net, and we lost a very gorgeous baby.

Gah.

To add insult to injury, Chester Junior got loose again. He's gone to gerbil heaven. We couldn't find him before the cat did.

Now, I'm going to type for colorectal surgeons, and I've already typed three reports on terminal cancer patients. Life is very depressing.

I think I'll go hand feed my bunny some hay.

Poor White Trash Seismographs, or...

How I coped with my first earthquake.

Welcome to tornado alley, have an earthquake on our Mother Nature special! What a way to try to keep working on a backlogged deadline!

"Mrs. Smith is a 42-year-old lady..."

We live on a fairly busy street. The first week we lived here, a truck came by, its smokestack flapper just the right height to tear down the power line from our house to the pole, taking our meter assembly along with it.

With the first shake, I thought, "Wow. That's a really big truck," but then realized there wasn't any sound with it. By the time I convinced myself it wasn't a truck...

"...who comes in for impaired glucose tolerance, hyperlipidemia, and anxiety disorder..."

The second tremor hit.

I watched my monitor scootch across the stand. I sat, just a millisecond, and let it register. Crash at Scott Field? No, stupid. That would be over already.

It's hard to walk on a shaking floor. I know it didn't last that long, and by the time I made it to Mr. Sapphire's office, asked him if this is an earthquake, it stopped.

I ran to the stairs and yelled for the kids. Tiger's Eye and ManCub have a truce and are sharing a room. I heard Tiger's Eye yelling for his brother to wake up, soon joined by KitKat.

The quake woke 2/3 up, and got ManCub's attention enough to where it took a mere 2 seconds before all three of them came downstairs.

4:36 a.m., 120 miles from the epicenter, we just kind of looked at each other. I told them to make themselves comfy on the couch, my bed, and the recliner, but no way. We just lived through an earthquake. Time to play Supersmash Brothers on the Gamecube.

They were up.

I got little work done.

It didn't scare me as much as I didn't know how to respond to such a thing. I wanted them in the front room, by the front door so we could get out. When my neighbor lady called a short while later, just to make sure us non-native Californians didn't exhaust our Ativan supplies, I told her I moved all the kids into the living room, by the exit.

"Don't do that, baby girl! You goes out the door, there could be the ground openin' up. Swallow you whole, doncha just knowit!"

Give me my tornadoes back, please! I have developed a sudden preference, nay, fondness, for family time in the basement!

We also chatted about how our cats knew something was up. She has a nice fat baby and he lit across the house just before, and my Mr. Purr walked around for a few hours prior to the event like something was stuck in his whiskers. The dog? Nothing, I told her.

"Only cats hear quakes. They hear stuff dogs cain't."

I trust the Californian. The cat is under constant surveillance.

KitKat had a stressful week, which meant her stomach pains became a mitigating factor against all she needed to accomplish. With both parts of her Constitution test out of the way, having a hard time sleeping before the earthquake, and the excitement after, she stayed home.

Nice, but I hadn't been to bed yet.

I'm not always of the opinion that I'm a *good* mom. I love my kids, I provide for them, and they always have clean clothes, but sometimes I think I'm shorting them because I work so much. I mean, I'm always here, but I'm not here for them, in my thoughts. Five minutes at a time doesn't substitute in any way for quality time, but it's sometimes all I have to give.

My motherly instinct, though, trumped. I absolutely could not sleep until Mr. Sapphire came home at 2:30. I didn't know what to do in an earthquake. Leaving KitKat alone didn't seem right.

We like Fruit2O around here. I bought some last weekend and haven't gone around picking up all the bottles yet (ManCub blamed). In this case, it worked out pretty handy. When the next tremor came about noon, KitKat and I hung out, hugging, watching a partially filled bottle until the water stopped sloshing, and then found the two other bottles and placed them in strategic parts of the house.

When her dad got home, I told her, in case of an earthquake, just put a pillow over my head. I didn't think I'd have the ability to feel another one. I'd just imagine Mother Nature rocking me to sleep. I incorporate things into my dreams like that.

And I slept for 15 hours. My bladder hated me. Hey, I stayed up 23 hours, on top of five hours of sleep, on top of three hours of sleep, on top of six...

I fully intend to get the house clean, but I think I'll keep my PWT seismographs on display. Aldi has them on sale again this week, too :)

Does this take up 1000 words?

In the absence of anything to blog (other than my KitKat will be 14 Monday and is going to her first cosplay with a little sailor suit and silver hair), I assume that if I find a picture that's worth 1000 words, since I have none (well, Mr. Purr caught a mouse, loved it to death, and left it in the kitchen for ManCub to step on), I'll post it because I really have nothing to say (except Tiger's Eye thinks making Mom hurt her neck in the busy Aldi parking lot to ensure that no cars are coming while HE'S driving is amusing).


see more crazy cat pics

My kind of Easter eggs

This is the year's first (hopefully not last) breeding success. There might be a little albino or two in those eggs. Doesn't she look like "Mine! Back off! Mine!"

Can't blame her. Now Mr. Sapphire will begin the daily chore of sitting on his hands and not checking on the eggs every five minutes. Maybe it will work this year.

Why I hate my house photo essay!

Yes, it wasn't good enough to rant. Now, you are welcome to see for yourself.

So you know life doesn't completely suck around here, see Ifrit:

The Spaz finally figured it out!

This, my friends, is Spaz. He's what's called a "spider" ball python "morph." Mr. Sapphire has a link to the very top right of the page if you want to know more.

We named Spaz shortly after getting him, because he had this funky, swaying motion he did with his head, side to side, perpetually in motion. Honestly, we rarely ever found him resting!

A few months back, I heard Mr. Sapphire yelling for me. I went back to see what happened, only to discover a Rubbermaid lid with a snake's head coming out of one of the air holes Mr. Sapphire puts in the snake containers. Okay. Spaz's head = 2.5 cm. Hole in lid = 0.5 cm.

Mr. Sapphire managed to remove him from his spazzy freak accident, but it became apparent that Spaz's jaw was dislocated. Imagine Mr. Sapphire's joy when Spaz finally ate for the first time, going back to the religious head motions and constant movement that we'd come to expect.

'Tis breeding season, now. Scooter, Gideon, et al, have figured out what's what in attracting the girlies. In fact, Mr. Sapphire retired Scooter because he was doing too well...almost to the point of exhaustion. He wouldn't eat until moved well away from the ladies AND got the idea that there were no more for him.

Spaz, however, got in, and did his little head motions and slithered all over the cage. Quite friendly, and admirably so, but that's not why we paid good money for a spider ball.

Mr. Sapphire charged in here the other night. "He's got it," he said.

"Spaz?"

"Yeah. He's lockin' up, and it ain't for long, but he's figured it out."

We're excited. Spaz is a pretty boy, and he's the foundation for a lot more morph projects. Again, if you're interested, please visit Mr. Sapphire's Page.

This isn't an attempt to get you to buy anything. We have nothing to sell, and probably not even after breeding season's over. Building stock takes some work.

But, our Spaz, dingy thing that he is, might be a proud papa.

Critter! I gots a new critter!

Meet Ifrit, our new 6-week-old lionhead rabbit. His neck is quite bushy, and it will fill out more. Hence, "lion head."

I first heard about lionheads on Restuvus, where a couple of ladies totally endorsed them as pets. I'm sure you've heard that I'm not huge on rodents before, but, c'mon, when a critter has a mane???? That's gerbil league! I did some research and found a local breeder in our area. There was only one. Guess who? My sisters' friends' dad! Ash and Boo, the twins, have been friends with his kids, a set of twins, for years. Ash called Mr. K and inquired about the rabbits. He had them, he said, with another litter only a week or so away from leaving mama.

I nearly stroked out from excitement. A critter with a mane! Everything I read about them just said, yeah. Great pet. More company for the night shift! I talked to Mr. Sapphire and, yes, Mrs. Sapphire could get herself a bunny...for the kids, you know. :)

Mr. K found it all quite interesting. He had just only started raising lionheads, and this was the first litter for him ever! I guess there's an AKC for rabbitdom, and lionheads aren't quite there yet, but he's smart for getting the jump on it when the will be. He couldn't believe we'd heard about it, as he's been raising about 50 different varieties of rabbits and is quite the authority.

Ash called me about a week ago...she said I was getting a bunny for Christmas, at a very, very nice discount. Actually, friends of friends are really, really nice. Mom called me last night to let me know I'd have a nice bunny by noon today. I worked nights, so I snoozed in the recliner, and woke up to a perfect black fluffball making a box rock on my belly, with Boo and Ash standing over me. The heavens parted, angels sang...

So, this is Ifrit. He's so soft, and he's very, very friendly. He's Ifrit because KitKat quickly vetoed Mr. Bun Bun (it was really only temporary. Really), and she didn't like Truffles. Both of us being into this writing stuff and irony, we picked a fire-breathing hellfire spewing demon from the Final Fantasy series. Yep. It was either that or Bahamut, and he looks like more of an Ifrit. If that makes sense to you, write me and I'll go in with you on group therapy.

Thank you, ladies! I love you and your friends. He's making me very, very happy. Mr. Sapphire keeps telling me he's not going anywhere, but I put his cage at eye level just to be sure.

Slither - Pit to Hiss In

Sister Joni, dear? Don't read any further down this page. Skip this post entirely. I'm not stalking tonight; I'm talking slithering.

I felt a little uptight today. One kid missed school, one has a big test tomorrow, and one had a project due and a test. In other words, I have IMs going like mad and Google wants to charge me per hit, while my mind switches from manganese to ser versus estar to Wounded Knee and back again.

Two Nimrods wanted the Nimrods' computer. Both had valid reasons. After some debate, I gave up mine and went back to bug Mr. Sapphire.

It's been a while since I've been back to the snake room. I mean, I go there almost daily to talk to Mr. Sapphire, but I was actually in the snake room, looking around, and paying attention. A certain frame of mind needs to be utilized in the snake room, because everything...and I mean everything...moves.

Mr. Sapphire pretty much keeps the mice to the left-hand wall, along with their food. To the right, there is a 50-gallon tank with rats. Yes, rats. Huge, ugly, smelly...

They used to be huge, ugly, and smelly, until Mr. Sapphire introduced us to soft-furred rats. Their little ears are so big they flop onto themselves, and they are so soft! I mentioned how cute they were and KitKat, who wandered back to let me know the computer was free, covered my eyes. The last time I took a shinin' to critters, I stole their cage. I have a spot by the window that's free...

Mr. Sapphire no longer keeps the ugly rats in the snake room proper. We have a room toward the back of the house, and they have been rightfully banished to give way to the precious soft furs with their soft, ruffled coats. Did I mention we have one that looks like a panda bear?

Then, you see the snakes, each kept in its own Rubbermaid (or knock-off brand) tub of a size made to accommodate the slitherling. We have a couple of new acquisitions lately, a baby spider ball python and a baby lemon ball python. I talked to my friend from the kitchen tonight.










Arachne (right) and No Name

I know it's silly, but picking a name for a snake takes a while. We now have two spider balls, one who got named "Spaz" pretty quick because of the motion he does with his head, a weaving motion. Scooter was always on the go, and Gideon - he was just a special deal. Mr. Sapphire purchased a snake and his snake got shipped to someone else. In order to rectify the mistake, they gave us Gideon at the same price. Given that he's a black pastel, which are hard to find, it was worth missing out on the snake Mr. Sapphire initially wanted. Gideon's grown a lot. He's a very nice little guy. He's never tried to strike anyone, and we got him out of his box twice tonight, once to satisfy my curiosity, and the next for me to show my enthusiasm to KitKat over how much he's grown. He wound his tail around our hands and looked at us like we had a right to be there. Yeah, he's cool. Delilah was one of our first; Jezebel, too, and she's got a nasty habit of striking food but not eating it. Both have grown so much over the last year.



Scooter (right) and Gideon

In addition, we have one we think is ovulating. Her body is all bumpy and her spine is showing. We're not new to snakes or their genetics, but we are relatively new to the whole reproduction thing. This is Mr. Sapphire's first true breeding season, and the boys are hard at work. Scooter's finally figured out how to slow down his life a little bit, and Gideon's just stalwart.

We've had a few accidents, too. Spaz thought it was a good idea to stick his head out of one of his air vents. We still can't figure it out, but he got his 2.5-cm head out a 0.5-cm hole. Mr. Sapphire called me back there to help, and it took a few breaths to realize what I saw, Spaz's head poking up with the white Rubbermaid lid hiding the rest of his body. He dislocated his jaw and, when he took that first rodent after the accident, Mr. Sapphire breathed a huge sigh of relief. Tonight, he proudly showed me how Spaz is back to normal, his head waggling every which way.

Our other accident involved a very large normal female. We only suspect she struck a rodent and hit the floor a little too hard, as there were no marks on her, just a very swollen head, so swollen we thought she lost an eye. In looking at her tonight, her head is now back to normal, and the eye is still there and working fine! Mr. Sapphire just IM'd me to let me know she just ate for the first time since 09/22. That's significant. That was her date of injury.

We named the new spider baby "Arachne." My friend from the kitchen is now "Moonlight," and we're working on names for a few of the others. I'm gaining confidence that we might actually be able to get some more eggs soon, and maybe little morph hatchlings.


Moonlight

My gerbils rock the world, though. If having the snakes got me my gerbils, I think that alone was worth it. Most certainly, some of it has gotten me some good blog fodder, so that's definitely worth it.

I'm redoing my tags here to make things more organized, so bear with me. I feel so relaxed right now. I'm excited about the future and creating morphs, not just for the retail value (although that's definitely the first priority), but for the experience. This gives us material for science projects for years to come, with established documentation. Mr. Sapphire's exhaustive records are such an asset.

To see the rest of our ladies and gents, please visit his site. I might help him get some new pics this weekend and help him update. We don't have anything for sale, but it helps him keep track and let everyone see what he's doing.

For more dementia, please see sapphiretigress.com. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Never mind the snake in the kitchen - beware of the cat!

Mr. Purr is at it again, and I found someone we thought we lost. At 2:00 a.m.

My life is never boring.

Do gerbils leave messages?

I think they might prefer this brand of box to shred, rip and build nests. Maybe not.

How many gerbils fit into a 5" x 5" square?

Answer: Thirteen. Yes, all 13. Well, Dreamsicle refused to stay put, but he was in and out of the pile, too. Honest!

You'd think with us buying them a 42" x 18" home, they'd spread out all over, and they do when they're playing, but they all pile up like this when sleeping--even over the babies, when they have tiny ones.

All the different-colored bits of paper are remnants of cardboard products we reduce, reuse, and recycle by giving them to the gerbils. You see, their teeth never stop growing, so they need to constantly nibble. They don't actually eat the paper, just shred it for nesting material. I spared you and cropped the trashbag box. They love paper towel rolls, too, running through them for a while before shredding them and adding it to their bedding. With 13 gerbils in this colony and all the paper products I know we've put in there, I think half their bedding is actually labeled bedding, and the other half is recycled cardboard from ordinary, everyday product containers.

Gerbils!

I like gerbils.

I am not a big fan of rodents, never have been. I am in no way fond of hamsters, no matter how hard Mr. Sapphire tries to get me to like them. They're noisy. When our power went off during the last ice storm, Mr. Sapphire and I stayed to take care of the snakes, using the gas heater in the snake room for warmth. Sleeping among snakes didn't bother me one whit; the stupid HAMSTER kept me up and made all kinds of horrible noises.

So...

Mr. Sapphire, as we all know, has snakes. Ball pythons are African in origin, as are gerbils. He wanted a cheap snake, and "wild caught" snakes from Africa are about as least expensive as snakes go. They are, however, by repute (and now experience) finicky eaters. Naturally, wild-caught African snake + African-originating gerbils = dinner.

I had no problems with this...at first. I mean, rodents either go in mouse traps or serve as part of the food chain. Then, one day, I meandered to the snake room and noted that he bought a colony of five gerbils. A rodent's a rodent, right? But these little guys stood up on their hind legs and looked at me, kind of like miniature prairie dogs. Still, I don't get attached to rodents, and I left.

The second time I went into the snake room, I saw them. Once again, the stood up on their hind legs. I asked them how they were doing, and they got all excited, running up to the sides of the cage and back. Okay, still no real tugging on the heart strings.

The third time, I talked to them and went to the cage and tapped their little noses. They got up on their little legs and came over, sniffing and running around like they were actually happy to see me.

I thought and thought hard. I went back out for just one more time, and stole the gerbil cage.

They now are housed in three different enclosures. The original colony reproduced, not horribly so, but enough to the point where the older females were ready to kick their daughters out as not to compete with their males, so we had to divide the colony a bit. Most live in one large aquarium and get along just fine. We have bought two more females, little ones, because Anubis, my black one, is going to be bred. I was all excited about the concept until we got him:



He's the offspring of one of our original gerbils. I call him Dreamsicle. As you see, he's snuggling quite comfortably with Anubis, our little black dude.

Here's a better pic of 'Nubi:



I want to make something clear: They are clean, quiet, and soothing. I have them right next to my desk, and am making room for the larger tank. Just looking at them brings them to you, and they are just sweet, sweet, sweet. The kids love to just go by for a minute and put their hands in. They love to shred cardboard and anything paper. It's like having your own little town right under your nose.

Thanks for reading this dissertation on the quality and importance of gerbils in the Sapphires lives.

Easter Eggs!

No, these are not sweet bunny eggs or colored chicken eggs. They are ball python eggs. The previously unnamed chiquita is now named "Eve." She is the first of our snakes to produce the desired eggs. There are four sitting in our hissing incubator, and Mr. Sapphire checks them every few hours, waiting for them to hatch. Since he has another 50 days plus to wait, he's going to be a little on edge until the blessed event happens.

Mr. Sapphire now has his own website. Please be sure to check out our "morph" snakes, which will eventually be bred to produce nice little pythons in yellow, spider pattern, black and orange, and the staple of the python world, just regular little ol' royal ball pythons in the normal variety.

Mr. Purr

This is Tiger, whom we affectionately call "Mr. Purr." Tiger's Eye took this pic and I think it's faboo. Tiger doesn't really look that mean, although this morning I am convinced that he is demon spawn. It's 6:30 a.m. I went to bed at 3:00 a.m., and I've been up for a good 45 minutes. You see, Mr. Purr is hungry. That means a good deal of head butting, walking around on my chest and this neat little trick he does with his paw. He taps you oh-so-gently on the face, but if that fails to get you out of dreamland, he extends his claws ever so slightly. This morning, he chose my throat. It felt like someone rubbing a Brillo pad on my neck. Mr. Purr got his way, obviously, because here I am.

I made a couple of changes to Red Watzana early this morning, you know, the ones I thought of just after I sent the manuscript to DAW. I have to finish Ice Queen. Have to, have to, have to.

Oh, oh, oh. This is the funniest quote I've seen in a long time. This comes from a letter actually dictated this way. He's a general surgeon and he's just a wonderful breath of fresh air. He's never been a stuffy dictator, but this is an example of his fine work:

"He and I used to be neighbors on the side of Watch Hill. We were the first to spot any Indian attacks or buffalo herds coming off the American plains."

He's the one who called the ASTC tank and left a message about the surgical center being on fire and to send 20 "fire fighterettes," preferably minimally clothed, to the surgical center to
extinguish the flames. I wish I had transcribed that instead of listening with tears rolling down my face. Next time, I'll type it up and cc him a copy.

KitKat and Man Cub start school Friday. Tiger's Eye, who is entering the 9th grade, is spared that tragedy until Monday. I don't want them to go back. I asked Mr. Sapphire if we could hire a governess, and he suggested winning the lottery. Oh, well. It's just so nice having them around. Tiger's eye, however, is starting Spanish. This should be fun. I intend on using my limited Spanish vocab and nothing else in his presence. I already have them recognizing "donde esta el telefono?"

I need therapy. Wait, I'm IN therapy. That's kind of like that little voice in my head that says, "Can we go home, now?" and then my cubs remind me that I *am* home, and that would be a problem, wouldn't it?