Crazy....

What a crazy day! It started off fine. Coffee, solitude, the last chapter of a book. It's all good. Princess Happy showered and dressed in a timely manner. Grandma Happy was coherent and pretty lucid. We got to dance class on time without driving like a maniac. Dance class went well, enjoyed some conversation with other moms, got out of line dancing, and had a fun lunch/play date with a few of the other moms/students in the class.

THEN we came home. We arrived just in time to watch Happy Girl's bus deposit students along Fair Street. I honked as I got closer to my street so that Happy Girl would see me and I could offer her a ride. She never turned around. She a few friends from up the street were deep in conversation while strolling down the middle of the street. I pulled up quietly behind them. Still - nothing. Didn't turn around. Didn't get out of the middle of the street. Just kept on walking and talking. So I laid on the horn. I've never seen 3 - 13 year olds freak like this. I think that they thought I was gonna hit them with the car (I was about a foot or two directly behind them) and they also realized that they were walking in the MIDDLE of the street. One boy even pushed his way past the two girls to get to the side of the road - but his eyes were WIDE OPEN CRAZY at the same time. Ha ha ha - it was funny. The girl's lectured me a little and up the street older sister also told me that if she ended up in the hospital because of her heart attack - I was getting the bill. Of course they were laughing hysterically while they lectured (I think it was the giddiness you feel when you thought something awful was going to happen and it didn't.) Ha ha - I laughed all the way home, while unloading the car, and cleaning the house.

Around 5 pm - Happy Girl decided to take the dog out for her evening potty break. She went out on the back patio to put the dog's leash on when I heard this blood curdling scream. MOOOOOOOOOM, HELP!!!!!!!! So I rushed to the back door to find my daughter screaming about a furry face behind the grill and that it had glowing red eyes and it was gonna bite her and don't let it into the house, and how does she keep Jetta from it .....(And she screamed all this so loudly that it brought everyone over to the back door to "help") I'm concerned, not because my daughter thinks a wild animal is going to bite her, but because the grill is less than 3 feet from my back patio door and I think this animal is going to rush in from outside into the warm house. I'm not quite sure what it is at the moment - but I yell for Happy Girl & dog to run into the house RIGHT NOW because I'm not holding the door open to talk them in slowly. They get in and as the door is shutting - Happy Girl is freaking, Princess Happy (Who is NOT a big animal lover to begin with) starts freaking out because she thinks it going to get in the house and bite her and she's crying.

OMG! Mr. Happy looks out the kitchen window and announces that it's a Opossum. It's peaking it's face in between the slats of my patio. So what do I do - I grab my camera of course. I climbed up on my kitchen counter to get several shots of the animal that caused all this confusion while I left my husband to calm down the girls. He can't. They are totally freaked out and hysterical. Of course, I'm starting to laugh at this point and I asked if anyone wanted to go camping. Mr. Happy shot me dirty look and kept trying to convince the older one that it was okay. He even offered to call next door to our retired police officer neighbor to see if Mr. Dave would "remove" the animal from our yard. Happy Girl then freaked - she said that we weren't allowed to kill "Pablo". PABLO????? WTF! Now she's naming this animal? I'm glad she didn't want it to be killed - but naming it? The little one is still screaming about "Oposs-I" and how horrible they are and do they eat children or dogs? I took the opportunity to look up Opossum on the Internet and discovered that they like to eat slugs, spiders, mice, rats, and snakes. They are "nature's gardeners" and the "Sanitation workers" of the wild. Oh Brother!!!!!!!!!! Eventually I got the princess to LOOK at a picture and announce that they aren't so bad.

So here is a picture of a "child eating" Opossum named "Pablo". I hope he doesn't stay too long. I think that I will have a hard time getting Princess Happy out into the backyard to play this spring. Forget about any snow fun in the backyard. I don't think I will tell her I found tracks on the driveway and on the side of the house. She might never go out again!