The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

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richie
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29 Oct 2010, 1:37 pm

Just got a call from the guy who runs the community garden and wants to know what I intend to do with my plots...I told I'll be taking everything out and then turn the soil and get it ready for next spring. Just had our first frost this morning.


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lelia
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29 Oct 2010, 2:02 pm

My husband is mad at our one little molting chicken. She sits by the back door for hours hoping someone will let her in, and she poops right where you step out onto the deck.



Nan
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30 Oct 2010, 8:49 pm

lelia wrote:
The wind and rain is washing the leaves off the trees here. The cool wind feels so good to me. My little dog shivers and hides in the houseguest's lap, and the molting chicken sits by the back sliding door asking to come in.


awww, the poor chicken. are you going to let her freeze out there???? :wink:



Last edited by Nan on 30 Oct 2010, 8:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nan
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30 Oct 2010, 8:57 pm

life seems a bit more normal this week. i was able to get by on only tylenol today. some pain, but nothing like it was. that's a marked difference, even from last week.

the kid has my living room full of her friends - they're all dressed in halloween costumes (she's a viking, complete with horned helmet!) and are playing cards. i was not able to cook for them like i did at other holiday parties (i used to make everything from scratch, no mixes), but was able to get some pre-cooked things at the store that you just pop in the oven and heat up. they seemed to like them - there are none left! they are also eating cupcakes, marshmallows, and count chocula cereal and talking about their childhoods.

ah, for the days. i wish we could go back and do it again, but without some of the baggage, without so much worry, and with a heck of a lot more money than we had!! !!

it was rainy and cold this morning, then about 1:00pm the sun came out and it went into the 70s. it's clear as a bell tonight and that should let the temperature drop overnight. supposed to be nice weather tomorrow for the trick-or-treaters. as always, we (mostly kid) decorated the house up outside - lights, fake cobwebs, jack-o-lanterns.... not many people have decorated in our complex this year. or around town, for that matter. is sad.

there's several vacant units, and some relatively low-income people have doubled up and moved in to some others. downstairs across the sidewalk now has two families living there, with i think about 8 kids total. no decorations - i guess they can't afford them. i bought extra candy, just in case they decide to haul it up the stairs and bang on the door.

still, there's crazyunclesteve.com - he put more things into it this year than last year. now a pair of eyes that move stare out of the house's windows (computer projection) and he has some pumpkins out front that he projects faces onto that sing. you drive by and tune your car radio to a certain fm frequency and it's all timed to music he broadcasts on the radio!

such fun.

he must have nothing else to do.... :lol:



Nan
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30 Oct 2010, 9:05 pm

oh. and we were missing george the cat. and tippy the cat. and the birds. especially spike. :cry:

we went to the pet store about a week ago and they were having an open house, with a raffle. i put my name in and won a big prize - a complete hamster cage setup. has little plastic tubes for them to run in, food, treats, toys, bedding, everything.

ok, it's the universe shoving. the kid and i have gone for a walk every friday at a shopping center nearby and they have a pet store in there. we've been looking at the little hamsters (so many different varieties now!) and saying for months how maybe someday we'd get one.

then i won the cage. ok, signs from beyond or something. we brought arnold schwartzenhamster home last night. i haven't seen him do anything but sleep, but the kid says he was running like a maniac in his little wheel after i went to bed last night. arnie's kind of brown now, but they say he'll look like this (below) in a few months.

Image



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31 Oct 2010, 2:25 am

One nice thing about hamsters is that they don't really need that much care - just keep them fed, change (or refill) the water every so often, and change the litter when it starts to smell bad, and they're happy, especially with the cage setup you describe.

Beware Siberian dwarf hamsters - they're a bit inbred, and can be violently insane. (Worst hamster bite I ever got came from one of those little buggers - I tried to pet him, but he wasn't having any.) Teddy-bear hamsters tend to be very gentle, though, and ours always loved riding in shirt pockets (well, except Threefoot - she was the adventurous sort, and would try to dive out of the pocket after a few moments). And of course regular Syrian hamsters can be lots of fun too, and generally aren't dangerous. (I think Arnie there is a Syrian.)

We're actually taking the kids trick-or-treating tomorrow night, even though it seems likely that showers will start again around 7. Hey, they're locals - a little rain isn't going to come between them and the annual ritual! 'Gana's been perseverating on Disney's "The Princess and the Frog", so we got her a Princess Tiana costume, and ever since we got it home the hard part has been keeping her out of it. Iain was going to be a ninja, but then he went across the aisle at the costume store and fell in love with the little plastic orange-and-white blaster, so we got him a Jango Fett costume to match. (From the Star Wars prequel movies - if you haven't seen them, don't bother, unless you're a completist. There's an online comic called Darths & Droids, treating the prequels as if they were from a sci-fi roleplaying game in a world with no Star Wars movies, and illustrated with screenshots from the prequels. It's strictly for the funny, but the characterization, and Anakin's descent to the Dark Side, is better shown in the strip than in the movies. They even manage to get a more nuanced performance from photographs of Hayden Christensen than George Lucas got from the real actor!)

H is going to dress in a schoolgirl outfit so I can drool. ;) I figured I'd go with my usual - a T-shirt that reads, "This is my costume." Unfortunately, J is in a program in the VA hospital just now, to see if they can help him cope with his PTSD and still stay in the Army. Coincidentally enough, he's due to be discharged from the program on Veteran's Day...


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richie
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31 Oct 2010, 7:38 am

Here are some goodies I pinched from Google......Happy Halloween.

Image
Image
Image
Image
Image

Starring Scooby Don't.......


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lelia
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01 Nov 2010, 2:48 pm

DeaconBlues: I wish J and his amygdala well.



Nan
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01 Nov 2010, 3:04 pm

DeaconBlues wrote:
One nice thing about hamsters is that they don't really need that much care - just keep them fed, change (or refill) the water every so often, and change the litter when it starts to smell bad, and they're happy, especially with the cage setup you describe.

Beware Siberian dwarf hamsters - they're a bit inbred, and can be violently insane. (Worst hamster bite I ever got came from one of those little buggers - I tried to pet him, but he wasn't having any.) Teddy-bear hamsters tend to be very gentle, though, and ours always loved riding in shirt pockets (well, except Threefoot - she was the adventurous sort, and would try to dive out of the pocket after a few moments). And of course regular Syrian hamsters can be lots of fun too, and generally aren't dangerous. (I think Arnie there is a Syrian.)

We're actually taking the kids trick-or-treating tomorrow night, even though it seems likely that showers will start again around 7. Hey, they're locals - a little rain isn't going to come between them and the annual ritual! 'Gana's been perseverating on Disney's "The Princess and the Frog", so we got her a Princess Tiana costume, and ever since we got it home the hard part has been keeping her out of it. Iain was going to be a ninja, but then he went across the aisle at the costume store and fell in love with the little plastic orange-and-white blaster, so we got him a Jango Fett costume to match. (From the Star Wars prequel movies - if you haven't seen them, don't bother, unless you're a completist. There's an online comic called Darths & Droids, treating the prequels as if they were from a sci-fi roleplaying game in a world with no Star Wars movies, and illustrated with screenshots from the prequels. It's strictly for the funny, but the characterization, and Anakin's descent to the Dark Side, is better shown in the strip than in the movies. They even manage to get a more nuanced performance from photographs of Hayden Christensen than George Lucas got from the real actor!)

H is going to dress in a schoolgirl outfit so I can drool. ;) I figured I'd go with my usual - a T-shirt that reads, "This is my costume." Unfortunately, J is in a program in the VA hospital just now, to see if they can help him cope with his PTSD and still stay in the Army. Coincidentally enough, he's due to be discharged from the program on Veteran's Day...



Oh my. Sadly, the Army is a good place to be when there aren't enough jobs out there. Hideous as it is to say it, if they ever end the war, where will all the soldiers go? They come home and take back their old jobs, the people currently in them become unemployed. The "war machine" lays off people, suppliers to the war machine lay off people, when there is no demand. Massive (more than now) unemployment, poverty, etc., etc. Talk about a Faustian dilemma! I think that the only thing that saved this country's backside in the Great Depression was Pearl Harbor. And the fact that with Europe blown to smithereens, we became the re-supplier and so much money was made.... Oh, nevermind. I'm in a mood. Back/Leg hurts.

Hope Halloween went well - we had four, count-em, four kids come by. And in the past week had three little adverts for fundie churches slipped under our cobwebs on the front door. (Those people are such a pain in the ass, you know? Ripped part of the cobwebs to do it!)

Arnold Schwartzenhamster seems to be a Russian Winter White Dwarf. He seems very friendly, actually. Comes over to the side of the cage to look at us. Going to give him a little longer to get used to being "home" and will then try to tame him. When we opened his little box when we brought him home he just sat up and held his little hands together and looked calmly at us. No panic, no baring of teeth, no little hamster threats.... http://www.hamsterific.com/WinterWhiteHamster.cfm

I had a "normal" brown hamster about 30 years ago. He was a real bastard, he was. Bit through my thumbnail one day while I was trying to get him out of his cage so I could clean it. Held on, while I was hollering and flinging my arm trying to get him off of it. Arnie seems a lot nicer. Plus, he's using the little litterbox attachment that came with the cage. Runs down one of the tubes and there's a little room with hamster litter on the floor, and he poops in there. Came with a tiny pooper-scooper. Hysterically cute. The kid is spending a lot of time looking at hamster toys, etc., online. Hope she doesn't ignore her rat, who is getting quite elderly and is very sweet.

I'll have to put hamster-cam online sometime, I guess. Pointless in the daytime, he just sleeps. But about 8pm, he's up and around and in his wheel like a demon. I wonder why they do that? Seems to just LOVE running as fast as his legs can go. Can't even see his legs moving, they're a blur. Fortunately, these days the wheels seem to all be plastic and don't make that obnoxious noise all night like the old metal ones used to.



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01 Nov 2010, 3:22 pm

Update: The rain held off until after 10, so the trick-or-treating wasn't spoiled. The kids got a pretty good haul from the three city blocks we covered, although they might have done even better if they'd been willing to wait a little longer, as I had asked them. (I tried to get them to wait until 6 - they insisted on leaving a little after 5.) Iain's never seen any of the Star Wars movies, so his interpretation of the costume was, "An astronaut!" He was horribly disappointed when we came home and didn't go out again - I don't think it was the candy so much as getting to go say hello to so many neighbors. (He's the gregarious type.) 'Gana was ready to pack it in after a block and a half, but stuck it out at her brother's behest.

H wasn't feeling up to going out at first (trying to save her energy for a friend's birthday party later), so I took them out myself. We didn't lay in any candy, so we kept the porch light off; fortunately, we had some lollipops from Iain's summertime habit (which he seems to have decided to drop), because we had a few kids to came to the door anyway. I'm not in the habit of embarrassing and disappointing children by lecturing them about traditions their parents obviously didn't cover (don't go to the houses where the porch light is off), so I gave them a little something instead.


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03 Nov 2010, 5:41 pm

oh good lord. they said MILD santa ana.

it's 100F outside, and over 100F by the house. it was in the 60s last week, sweater weather.
glad i watered the potted plants yesterday. will have to do so again as soon as i get home.
it's a little LATE for this, atmospheric gods.... :evil:



lelia
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03 Nov 2010, 6:39 pm

Yikes! The wind is blowing here, waiting for us to open the door to fling leaves at us. But it is a sweet temperature and sunny. One feels energized here close to Portland OR.



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05 Nov 2010, 10:55 am

New day, new post: My dad cracked a vertabra in his neck. Later today we'll see a spinal specialist and see what his prognosis and treatment will be. He's been falling, so I have a hunch he might not be going home again. He wanted to stay home as long as he could, and I think he reached the end of his could. How a hermit will do in a nursing home, I don't know. I'll make sure he has a refrigerator full of beer in his room and a cable TV and a bird feeder out his window.



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05 Nov 2010, 5:21 pm

lelia wrote:
New day, new post: My dad cracked a vertabra in his neck. Later today we'll see a spinal specialist and see what his prognosis and treatment will be. He's been falling, so I have a hunch he might not be going home again. He wanted to stay home as long as he could, and I think he reached the end of his could. How a hermit will do in a nursing home, I don't know. I'll make sure he has a refrigerator full of beer in his room and a cable TV and a bird feeder out his window.


All the finer things in life, that. :wink:

I hope he's ok. Tell him to behave himself, those vertebrae are nothing to futz around with. The pain can be wicked, but it can be a lot worse than just pain if he doesn't take care of himself.



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13 Nov 2010, 1:38 pm

DeaconBlues wrote:
One nice thing about hamsters is that they don't really need that much care - just keep them fed, change (or refill) the water every so often, and change the litter when it starts to smell bad, and they're happy, especially with the cage setup you describe.

Beware Siberian dwarf hamsters - they're a bit inbred, and can be violently insane. (Worst hamster bite I ever got came from one of those little buggers - I tried to pet him, but he wasn't having any.) Teddy-bear hamsters tend to be very gentle, though, and ours always loved riding in shirt pockets (well, except Threefoot - she was the adventurous sort, and would try to dive out of the pocket after a few moments). And of course regular Syrian hamsters can be lots of fun too, and generally aren't dangerous. (I think Arnie there is a Syrian.)

We're actually taking the kids trick-or-treating tomorrow night, even though it seems likely that showers will start again around 7. Hey, they're locals - a little rain isn't going to come between them and the annual ritual! 'Gana's been perseverating on Disney's "The Princess and the Frog", so we got her a Princess Tiana costume, and ever since we got it home the hard part has been keeping her out of it. Iain was going to be a ninja, but then he went across the aisle at the costume store and fell in love with the little plastic orange-and-white blaster, so we got him a Jango Fett costume to match. (From the Star Wars prequel movies - if you haven't seen them, don't bother, unless you're a completist. There's an online comic called Darths & Droids, treating the prequels as if they were from a sci-fi roleplaying game in a world with no Star Wars movies, and illustrated with screenshots from the prequels. It's strictly for the funny, but the characterization, and Anakin's descent to the Dark Side, is better shown in the strip than in the movies. They even manage to get a more nuanced performance from photographs of Hayden Christensen than George Lucas got from the real actor!)

H is going to dress in a schoolgirl outfit so I can drool. ;) I figured I'd go with my usual - a T-shirt that reads, "This is my costume." Unfortunately, J is in a program in the VA hospital just now, to see if they can help him cope with his PTSD and still stay in the Army. Coincidentally enough, he's due to be discharged from the program on Veteran's Day...


Holy!! It's been so long since I've had anything useful to say that I can't remember how to quote only part of the above!!

Hello, Everyone! I've been lurking in between my online childcare courses, changing diapers, teaching ABC's and 123's and learning about various childhood syndromes and disorders so as best serve the special needs kids that come to my house every morning at 6:30 am. And when I'm done doing that we have soccer, homework, the Asperger's and ADHD of my own kidlets,, dating advice, University papers to edit AND when I sit down and can breathe for a moment..... knitting and every episode of Dr. Who I can get my hands on.

I started being a dayhome mom again in June and went from having only 4 kids in the house to 10 everyday.... only 1 little dog to 1 little dog, a budgie named Grover, several fish whose names I haven't committed to memory but Angelgirl sure has, a Betta named Garnet and one very friendly, fat hamster named Cuddles... who came to live with us 3 days ago because Hammy succumbed to old age. We managed to hand feed her applesauce and oatmeal for a month but she had gone blind and I believe deaf so it was best she didn't linger for much longer. Angelgirl had pre-planned the funeral, made the coffin and tombstone and the funeral went very well.

I experienced the little Syberian psychopath hamsters first hand and still have the scars in my hand to prove it. Nasty little buggers they are!! My brother forgot about the experience and bought one for his daughter..... we now have matching scars.



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15 Nov 2010, 10:04 am

I've had Russian dwarf hamsters. They are very, very territorial, which can lead them being quite aggressive. Males are said to be more aggressive than females, but my experience has been the opposite. But this is natural behavior. It's not due to inbreeding (in fact most russian/Siberian dwarf hamsters in the pet market are hybrids of the Campbell's Russian and the Russian "Winter White" species). It's just people think all hamsters are equally domesticated, but they're not. So when dwarfs act less domesticated than Syrians, people assume it's due to some defect, not realizing that is just their natural wild behavior.

A general rule among hamster breeders is, the smaller the hamster, the more aggressive it can be. Some people say the Cambell's are less aggressive. Other say the Winter White. I think due to so many hybrids, no one can tell. Only a private breeder or rodentologist who has verifiably non-hybrid breeding adults can say for sure theirs hamsters aren't hybrids and could compare the level of aggressiveness between to two species.