Coffee time.

It was my fault this time.  Sort of.  

Mozart slept better last night.  And, therefore, so did I.  At the beautiful hour of 7am (as opposed to the ungodly hour of 5am), He woke up and requested breakfast downstairs.  I obliged and then made myself coffee.  While Mozart got on with his morning, I drank my coffee on the couch while catching up with Facebook.  I was down to my last dregs, which I usually leave, and so had put my cup on the side table.  Mozart was playing nearby.  

And then it happened.  Again.

This time I got a coffee shower.  It was unintentional on his part, and it wasn't near the quantity of beer I was showered with yesterday.  I screeched anyway, but I've got no one to blame but myself.  And thankfully, coffee is a much more tolerable smell than beer.

Lessons learned this week:  

1. Always check side table (and couch) for any remnants from anyone's evening beverages or snacks upon coming down in the morning.
2. Always put your own cup away immediately after you've decided you are down.
3. Always be aware of the child's doings for you may be showered with unpleasantness if you are not.
4. Do these things even if you are tired.  

Oh, Come On!!

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I was so very, very tired.  Since that time, I've yet to get a truly restful night's sleep.  Mozart has been sick in a variety of ways ~ tummy trouble, fever, congestion, and now what may very well be hand, foot and mouth disease as evidenced by the sores in his mouth and the screaming that follows attempting to swallow anything but milk or yogurt.  So last night, instead of staying up and watching a show with TW, I went to bed and fell asleep before I even got done with one page in my book.

You can imagine that I was less than thrilled that he woke up at 5am.  And that he wanted to be up for the day at that point.  My overly tired brain could not take the screaming that ensued when I suggested he try, just try, to go back to sleep.  He wasn't having it.  Wanted to come downstairs and have breakfast.  I relented by half.  I made him ask me in a less screamy voice, but we did go downstairs.  Not to have breakfast, which I explained would absolutely not happen until it is light out, but to snuggle.

I did not turn on any lights. He said he was scared of the dark, but I said he had the choice of snuggling/resting with me down in the dark or he could go back up to his room.  He chose to stay with me.   We felt our way over to the couch and sat down.  As I felt around for the blanket I knew was there, I put my hand on a slimy, sticky thing.  I yelped a bit, which caused Mozart to snuggle closer as I realized the thing my hand was on was the lid for a Ben and Jerry's ice cream.  Somewhat irritated, I muttered to myself about cleaning up after oneself, moved the offending object to the coffee table, and proceeded to snuggle in with Mozart.  He did very well for some time, probably close to an hour, and he rested laying on top of me.  Every once in awhile he'd get restless, I'd ask him if he wanted to go back upstairs, and he'd settle down again.

And then it happened.

I heard a small, "What this, Mama?"  And was immediately showered with a deluge of cold liquid.  I screamed outright in shock.  My neck, hair and sweatshirt, as well as the couch behind, were saturated.  With beer!?!  Seriously?!?  Now I am, well, howling in dismay.  Mozart is joining in the howling because he doesn't know what is going on and if the dark is scary, I'm sure having your mother freak out in the dark for heaven knows what reason, is even scarier.

We howl our way upstairs, and I unceremoniously deposit Mozart in our bedroom, with a sleeping TW, and announced that I need to take a shower because my dear wife has left what must have been full beer to be poured on top of me and I now smell like a brewery.

I am showered now, and much more collected.  TW calmed Mozart down and I even got an apology from the little guy. TW has gone back to bed and so the leaving-out-of-drinks will need to be addressed later.  As my previous plans of getting to the gym early and then showering have been rearranged, we'll now be off to the Dairy Farm for milk, the Veggie Farm for veggies and flowers, and then the Farmer's Market for anything that didn't come in our CSA this week.  I'll hit the gym later.

Shat upon.

Yep.  That's me.  Shat upon.  Twice now.  From the sky.  At least this time it was, by stroke of luck, my hand and not my head.  Or the groceries, which my hand hovered over as it happened.  It appears the winged ones are eating their share of pumpkins and squash these days. 


And that is unfortunate because it just so happens to look nearly exactly like the soup that I made for dinner.  A delicious soup, mind you, but considering the earlier events, you can see why the thought is less than appetizing right at the moment...

The soup calls for hubbard squash, which I just so happen to have from our CSA.  It was a large squash and my butcher knife was no match for it.  I felt like I needed an ax to properly get into it.  After a fair amount of unfortunate language, I somehow managed to cut enough of one end off that I was able to pry it off to hollow out the seeds.  I went back at it with the knife, but after half an hour I really hadn't gotten anywhere.

The solution, my friends, to getting your large hubbard squash into chunks small enough to lay out on a pan for roasting?  Gravity.  Perhaps with a little force.  I put Mozart in the Pack'n'Play for protection, raised the vegetable high above my head and smashed it to the ground.  It broke into three pieces.  Mozart hooted, "Again!"  And so we did. Until we had the entire thing in pieces that could be laid out on the cookie sheets. 

Our bat made the paper!!

I just love it!  We are the first incident listed in this article that was on the front page. They don't list us as the home being invaded by the bat, or give the bat a name or anything. But hey, there's some notoriety for ya!   I didn't have time to scan the article, but here's a photo. Notice the fold, and how the headline is above it - this must truly qualify as serious news. Gotta love small town papers.

That's BATastic!

 Whew! We're in the clear!! The woman at DPH said on Friday that Boston usually calls early afternoon with the results so we should have the results by then but that she would definitely call me by 3:30p either way because if by that time we hadn't heard the results we were all going to have to have the shot.  This sounded great to me and, really, I wasn't worried because everyone I'd spoken to said the rates were either very low in this area or that they hadn't seen any cases this year.  That was until juuuuuust about 3 o'clock when I hadn't heard yet.  At that point I began to get a little worried.  By 3:15, I was a little bit more worried.  And by 3:28 I was poised with the number to call and check up on this woman who promised to call.  At 3:30 on the dot I dialed the number and: No one picked up.  Aaaaack!!  I attempt, unsuccessfully, to get some work done. I tried the Wife's number, ready to tell her we'd better give our insurance a heads up that we'd need the shots, and she wasn't there either.  I didn't want to leave that message as I didn't want to believe that we'd all have to line up and be subjected to a series of needles.  As I was about to dial her cell, at 3:48, mine rang.  It was the DPH lady.  She'd been out all day, had three messages, hadn't checked them yet, but just wanted to check in with me before I began to panic - um, a little late, but thanks.  She hung up to check her messages.  I waited anxiously.  At 3:52 she called back.  She greets me pleasantly.  I say, "Yes?" - all the while holding my breath.  She says the results are in.  I say, "And?(!)" And she FINALLY say, after pausing again, "the bat tested negative."  Woo Hoooo!  Huge sigh of relief!

Now maybe I can stop the obsessing - really, I've been dreaming of bats non-stop since the Bat Fiasco.  Along the way I've gathered some fun facts about bats.  Much of this I learned in the moments after the arrival of the bat, by way of the Wife spouting out, iPad in hand, facts that any good bat-hunter should know. And further fun facts were by way of continued obsession - many, many websites, and random people telling me bat tales.  In the order with which they pop into my head:

• Bats can get through exceedingly small spaces - 3/8ths of an inch to be exact.
• If trying to catch a bat wear leather glove as bat armor.  You need to ensure that you do not come in contact with the bat because rabies can be transmitted through bites or scratches.
• The methods of catching a bat are as follows: If on the ground, use a towel to drape over it and scoop it up - ensuring your are wearing your bat-armor-gloves.  If perched on a wall, trap it behind an oatmeal, yogurt, or tupperware container.  If in flight, use a butterfly net - not a fishing net as the bat will likely escape due to the larger holes.  The net, it the least suggested form of capture as it increased the likelihood of human-bat contact.
• Unless you saw the bat enter your house, you don't know how long it's been there and you should contact your doctor about the rabies shots.
• If you do let it go, put it on a tree or up high somewhere.  They have a hard time taking off from the ground and they'll hop around pathetically for a bit before being able to take flight.
• While bats are commonly referred to as rodents, they are not in fact related to rodents, and are more closely related to alpacas, hippopotamus, and dolphins!!   (what?? can this be real???)
• There are megabats and microbats.  But not all megabats are bigger than microbats.  
• Bats aren't blind, but they don't see well at all and they mostly "see" with their ears, so if there are noises about it will make the bat confused as to how to get out, so one should turn off the music, clocks, computers, or anything that makes any noise if you want it to find its way out.  
• While a large grouping of bats is now called a "Colony", in the middle ages it was called a "Murder", just as A Murder of Crows, as the black-wings hoards were mistaken for each other.
• The largest bat - called a Flying Fox - has a wingspan of, oh help, SIX FEET!! The smallest bat is called a Bumblebee Bat.
• Bat guano - a.k.a. bat poop - has been used for things such as bullets (really, in the Civil War!!), and could be used to detoxify waste, improve detergents and for antibiotics - but as far as I can tell, it isn't actually used in mascara.  And thank goodness, because that stuff stinks in indescribable ways - and I know this from standing outside a great bat cave in years back.
• Oh, and Vampire Bat saliva is an anticoagulant!

I'd like to go on and write about other things - Bat Hypnosis, the origins of phrases like "bat-shit crazy" and "like a bat out of hell",  and other bat-lore, but I must end my obsession for now.