Another Monday�

2005-05-23

There's a body in the living room. . . Well, sort of. We went over to Mom-in_law's house this weekend for a belated Mother's Day; Mom-in-law having been sick on the weekend in question. Wonderful spouse's grandmother died a couple of months ago. Mom-in-law's (expletive deleted) brother asked for the ashes. He, who had seen his mother twice in the 12 years we've been married. Mom-in-law cared for her mother in every way for years. Including those years where she was devolving into senile dementia. So we took a bunch of stuff to mail for MIL, including the ashes.

We included in our Mother's Day time about an hour looking for vegetarian gelatin for the brother's wife. I don't think they have a clue what MIL's life is like. She doesn't drive. Anywhere she goes, she goes by bus or we take her. And they're asking her to fetch gelatin for them. I really don't have words bad enough for people like that.

On the good side, I'm amused by my job most of the time. People call City Hall for the weirdest stuff. "There are ducks in my pool. I think they're from a park nearby. Will you come and take them away?" Or "Why do the Senior Centers in Palm Springs charge $35 for a Wong Chai lesson (Tai Chi, I think), and in this city it's free?" I'm alternately amused and appalled. I have a new perspective on why government is such a difficult thing.

On a totally different note, when I got home today and walked in the door I looked out into the garden to see the spouse with a perturbed look on his face. "Baby possum!", he said, pointing. "I was going to get some gloves."

Possums are such unappealing creatures. They look like rats, and when full-grown are the size of a house cat. This one is a baby; the size of a real rat. I'm thinking it must have been in the yard since last night. The spouse thinks I should leave it out for its mom to find it, but I think it's too late for that. Even if I hadn't touched it, which I have, the cats had been at it. It's not going to smell like mom's baby possum anymore. Leaving it outside just sounds like leaving it to any neighborhood cat to find and eat, or just to die of exposure. So I went and bought kitten milk, put it in a quiet place with a well-insulated heating pad. I've fed it twice now, and it's actually eating/drinking and seems better. It tried to bite me. That's much more aggressive than it was when we first found it.

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