OF HAMSTERS AND CATS

Yesterday was a very busy day.  It was not the kind of busy where you look back at the end and see all that you got accomplished.  It was more the type of busy that I imagine Teddy the hamster feels while running nowhere in his wheel.  In fact, my first misadventure actually involved poor Teddy.  Right after breakfast, I noticed that Teddy was awake in his cage.  This does not always happen during the day, as he is by nature a nocturnal animal, so I decided to take the opportunity to let him run around in his ball, and clean out his cage.  Well, I got it all cleaned out and spiffy, and filled with fresh shavings.  Then, I went to carry it back to its shelf.  OOPS!  I apparently hadn't gotten it put back together securely, because as soon as I picked it up, it fell apart...Shavings everywhere.  Sigh!  At least they were the clean shavings.  Thank you, Lord!  So, I cleaned up my mess, and now we are late starting school.  So, we start.  We got the reading done.  And the math.  Then the writing....oh, the writing.  This is Rory's least favorite thing to do.  He is supposed to be writing a book, called "The Little Red Hen Bakes Bread."  He dictated the story as I wrote it down months ago, and has since been working on copying it into a book and adding illustrations.  I think he got three or so words done, yesterday.  Then, Lily fell asleep, so I decided it was a good time to do the art lesson, as it is difficult to do this with Lily "helping."  So, we start art.  We are supposed to be noticing the shapes that make up pictures.  Then, we work with Tanagrams to make pictures, and then we are supposed to be drawing a still life.  Well, Rory was incredibly excited about the Tanagrams, so he started making a book with all the Tanagram pictures he had created.  Well, at least he's doing some writing.  I guess we'll have to do the still life another day.  This is the good thing about Homeschooling.  You can always catch up later.  Sometimes it works the other way, too.  Monday, he actually got farther on his Science lesson than I thought he would.  It will all even out, someday.  So...only about four more things to do for school.  But, wait!  Part of the difficulty with accomplishing our agenda today, has been that we are waiting to hear back about a cat.  We found out that some people from our homeschool group are moving to a different house, and they can't take their cat with them.  So, since our rather old animals (two cats and one dog) all passed away within the last few years, leaving us with only Teddy the hamster, I was excited to see that we could get another pet.  Dear Hubby has been reluctant to get another pet, as he had gotten so attached to the last ones that he had a hard time saying goodbye, but he finally agreed.  So, we spent the last part of the day looking at a video of the cat online, and then going to get the cat!  So, now our family includes a pretty kitty named Lucy.  Of course, no one wanted to go to sleep last night, because they wanted to know what the cat was doing.  I finally got to bed about 11:00, and Lily didn't wake up until 4:30 A.M., so I got a bit of sleep.  Mike informed me that he had spent most of the night playing with the cat to distract her from "staring at Teddy with bad intent," as he put it.  So, he's off to work, Rory's making cat toys out of everything in the house, and the cat is hiding under Lily's bed.  Time for School!