Exquisite Turmoil

Bwahaha! Highlander finally arrived today.. seriously took like three weeks to get here. I’ve got the Kurgan’s theme song on my iPod (Gimme the Prize) and every time it came on Dan and I would be taken with a desire to watch the movie. After a trip to Best Buy, Target, Walmart and Blockbuster yielded 0 copies of Highlander we just ordered off of Amazon. Not through Amazon, mind you, but a random seller. I was beginning to think it would never arrive.

In any case.. wow.. I forgot how much the movie sucked! Don’t get me wrong, I love it to death and I’m so happy to own it now, but it is truly awful. And enjoyable. At the same time.

I suck so bad at blogging, seriously.  Honestly, life has been fairly boring recently.  Most of my time has been taken up with reading ratforums and sewing rathammocks and other things involved with rat obsession.  I actually registered a new domain name yesterday for ratblogging!  Don’t worry, I still intend to blog here, the rat page will just be for rat related items.

So, Dan and I have played a bit of WAR.  We’ve both got level 21 characters, mine is a Warrior Priest and his is an Ironbreaker.  The game is fun, but I’m having a little trouble getting into it.  Don’t get me wrong, it would be all too easy to get into it (we played basically nonstop for three days when we finished downloading), but as I’ve said about a million times before — I am an all or nothing person.  If I’m going to do something I am going to do it.  I don’t really want to get sucked into MMOs again, it just eats up so much time and I’ll admit that when I’m playing I kind of lose track of the world, and I don’t particularly feel like sinking back into that mire.  For that reason, I’m having trouble getting into the game.  I make myself not play as often as would be my natural inclination to do so and because of that I feel a sort of disconnect with the game.

Dan really enjoys it and would, I think, like to play in the longterm but I guess I’ll have to see where things go.  If I can find a comfortable equilibrium between playing all the time and not playing at all then I think that we’ll continue to play, but with the way I’m currently feeling about the game.. well.. I’m just not sure.  Only time will tell, I suppose.

The kids went to the doctor on Friday for vaccinations.  They’ve actually had quite a few shots over the course of this year, but this is the first time that Dan was able to go with us (as we scheduled the appointment for after school, whereas previously Anya was only going to half-day school and we made appointments for while Dan was at work).

Getting shots is always a big undertaking.. the kids sob and scream, then we go get ice cream and usually pick out a toy.  Apparently, however, Alex decided that Daddy being along meant he had to be brave.  Firstly, he declares that he is getting his shots first today (normally he and Anya fight and try to make the other go first).

Then, he asks the nurse how many shots he needs to get, and she says two.  So he replies with…

“Two?  Hah, I laugh when I get two shots.”  So she gives him the first shot, and we hear “Waaaaah-ha.. ha.. ha.. hah.”  I wish I had a recording of it.  He so obviously wanted to wail but he forced out the most fake laugh I’ve ever heard.  It was adorable.

So I’m making a trip to the bank today and driving along on our little crappy dirt roads, talking to Dan on the phone.  At the last house on the road there are some guys out working in the yard.  I take my hand off of the steering wheel to turn on my blinker.. and when I put it back on the wheel.. I honk x.x  On accident, of course.  But all the guys just kind of looked up at me like “heh.. heh..”, so they obviously thought that I was honking at them.  I think I must have laughed for like five minutes.

It really doesn’t sound funny when I type it out, but I was laughing so hard trying to tell my mom once I got to the bank.. we were both cracking up so hard that we were practically crying.

The cage is completed~! Doesn’t it look fantastic? I still need Dan to modify the bars with hardware cloth (since the boys will be small enough to slip through the bars for a few months), but other than that it is all ready for occupants! Isn’t it amazing how much better it looks than the previous picture, with just the addition of a few more hammocks and liners? The liners, I think, make the biggest difference. To me they make the cage look comfy and plush, whereas before it didn’t look like it would be particularly comfortable (as soon as you stepped foot out of a hammock, that is). I also have to say, Dan’s idea to add a tube hammock leading back to the corner hammock (back left) was fantastic.

Now to get another set of hammocks and liners ready! I’m currently working on a Halloween set (just have one hammock and a cube done) and then I’ll make a set out of a cute stars pattern that Anya picked out. I’d like to have at least four liners completed by the time the boys arrive, and three sets of hammocks (not counting the Halloween one, since it’s for… Halloween).

I swear, I’m going to slowly go insane waiting for the 10th of October to roll around. I want my rat babies so bad!

Whee! Dan took me shopping today (Petco) to buy some necessary items for the rat cage. Lets see.. we got a nice big wheel, a litter box, an igloo, a water bottle (glass), a little hangy toy thing, a bunch of jingly balls (cat toys), and a few teeny tiny stuffed pumpkins. Oh yes, we also bought a little ladder. The ladder isn’t going to be remaining where you see it in the picture, it’s just sitting there until Sunday. The girl I bought the cage from forgot to give me the ramp for it (and I am, obviously, picking it up on Sunday) so the ladder is there temporarily to look cute and such. Once I get the ramp I think that I will hang a little basket from the side of the cage and have the ladder lead up to that.

I also ordered a new bottom pan (one that doesn’t have the cut out part in the back right, under the litter box) and an outside ramp that will lead from the door down to the floor so that the rats can go in and out of the cage at will when the doors are open. You can also see from the photo that I started making some larger hammocks, and that they look MUCH better in the cage. I’d still like to make a nice big cube and maybe a double decker out of this fabric, but I think that the first set of bedding (I am discounting the actual first set since it is too small and useless) is almost complete. Ah yes, I also need to make liners, but I’m holding off on that until Dan gets a chance to take the pan and shelf outside to power wash them.

Well, I picked up the cage today! It’s a Ferret Nation model 142, although the top portion of it has been removed so it’s basically an FN141. Which is perfect.. a 142 would have been WAY too big for my living room and for two rats. Quite honestly, the 141 is a lot bigger than I expected it to be. I mean, I knew that it was a large cage but I didn’t realize exactly how large. I was kind of hoping it would tuck under the counter where it hangs into the living room, but it’s too tall for that. Ah well, the rats will hopefully enjoy having all of the space. Unfortunately, I now realize that all of the hammocks that I made are too small =/ I made them knowing that they were a little smaller than what most people have, but I figured that it would be better that way since the rats will be babies when I get them, but the hammocks just look comical in the cage!

I mean, I can always make more since I have tons of fabric still (I haven’t even touched three of the four fabrics) but it’s a bit disappointing since I spent a lot of time making the ones that I did and it feels like such a waste of fabric. Hopefully I’ll be able to find something to do with them. Maybe after I make a few bigger ones and get them into the cage, I’ll find somewhere to put these little puny ones..

My darling, adorable, wonderful husband took me to Joann’s yesterday to buy like $100 worth of fabric to make hammocks for my sweet rats! People on goosemoose make and sell hammocks (and for very reasonable prices) but I figured it would be fun and cheaper to make my own. Not to mention, then I can really pick any fabric at all that I want, and don’t need to be limited by what someone else has in stock. I decided to go for an elegant theme with my cage, rather than something cutesy / animal print / etc. Dan picked the red / yellowish one (second from the left) and I picked the rest. We also bought coordinating fleeces to line all of the hammocks (and to make floor liners so we can get right to work on litterbox training the rats) and metal eyelets so they won’t be tempted to chew the attachment points.

Here’s what I’ve completed so far. This is my least favourite of the fabrics (actually the one that Dan picked is, but he picked it so..) so I decided to make my first set of hammocks out of this one, so that I wouldn’t care so much about any mistakes (as, afterall, the ones done in my favourite fabric will hopefully look perfect). I don’t really like the basket thing very much — the handles didn’t work out the way I had been envisioning and the fabric pulled a bit while I was sewing it.. I must not have pinned it well enough. In any case, I’m happy with the standard hammock and the “double decker” hammock. Think I’ll try my hand at a triangular one now!

Obsession strikes again. With the rats not coming home until October 10th (we’ve set the date now) and no cage until Thursday, I really haven’t got anything to do that involves rats aside from reading the forums, and there is only so much forum reading that one can do when the community is so small.  Once I pick up the cage I’ll spend countless hours sewing fleece liners / hammocks / cubes / etc but for now.. I can embroider!  This is actually the first completely freehand piece that I’ve done, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.  I think it looks quite cute, at least.  I do see several things that I would do differently were I to embroider this same thing again (I’d use a different outline stitch, for one) but all in all, I’m happy ^-^  Now if only I’d embroidered it on something other than a huge pair of “I never wear these granny panties”.  If I had known how adorable it would end up being…