Frogs and linocuts

Yesterday I looked into Marshmallow's habitat and she was...acting strange. I alerted Benjamin to this fact and he checked on her, refreshed her water, and found some grubs to see if he could tempt her to eat. She seemed to perk up a bit and was hopping around for awhile. However, when we returned from our walk, we found Benjamin sobbing on the couch. 

Marshmallow had died while we were out and Benjamin was, in Zoë's words, inconsolable.

Rather, she said, "I do not know how to console him. He is too sad for me to console."

He was quite sad, and is quite sad. And that's okay.

I believe it was Alexander who quipped that at least Marshmallow was in heaven now. 

Benjamin rebuffed this attempt at comfort, telling us all that he'd "been to a website about how to help people after their pets die and one of the worst things to say is that they're in a better place so it's okay because it's not okay!"

"You're right," I said. "It's sad and it sucks."

I don't use that word terribly often, and neither did my mother, but I do remember that one time when something truly sucky happened, my mother had told me that there was really just no other word for it—whatever happened had just plain sucked. 

Cats and ceilings and things

Our cat, Andrew was surprised to learn, can exit what we refer to as "The Lego Room" without using the door. 

Benjamin is typically in charge of putting kitty to bed each night and he's gotten in trouble a time or two for not securing her properly. He will swear up and down that he put her in The Lego Room and closed the door and doesn't know how she keeps getting out! But, of course, by the time any parent has gotten down there to investigate, the door is wide open (so there's no evidence that it was ever closed).

For the record, I have—time and again—taken Benjamin's side of this issue. 

My theory has long been that the cat climbs into the ceiling somehow. We have a drop ceiling in half our basement and it opens up into The Lego Room. From the very first day we got her and she simply disappeared—we couldn't find her anywhere—I started to suspect that she'd been finding her way into the ceiling. And for a very good reason!

I've blogged about this before, but I'm going to write about it really quickly (even though I should probably be finishing my reading for my class; but I'm all jittery-mad from the presidential debate so I'm going to write it off) because, well, I think it's interesting how a story can be told in different ways at different times. As it's remembered differently different details come to light. And maybe some details are changed while others stay the same. That's how memories are. Having someone give more than one version of a single event doesn't particularly ruffle my feathers.

Anyway...