the one where I cough. a lot.

Well, I seem to have caught Sam's coughing cold. Woooohoooo!!! Not really. I felt awful yesterday, but am feeling surprisingly human today. Yea for me. Cough.

Wes went home on Wednesday, and we were so glad to have him! Here's a picture of him with (a very dirty and always-bruised) Evelyn.

They're watching Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. By the way, if you have not seen this movie, you must go out and rent it today. It is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, animated or not.

The other morning, when the kids were at Mom's, John and I woke up to find a snake on our porch. It was a little thing, and it had a few little flesh wounds. We're thinking it was a gift from the cats. Anyway, since guineas are supposed to just absolutely hate snakes (that's one of the many reasons we got them), we thought it would be a good time to introduce the Stooges to the snake. It was just a rat snake, by the way, so we weren't worried about the snake biting them.


Now don't get me wrong; I love the Stooges to death. I think they are very funny, and would be sad if anything ever happened to them. However, they are stupid. And I don't just mean stupid. I mean, they are STOOPID!!!! It took them about 5 minutes just to notice the snake, after I'd picked it up and placed it in front of them several times. I put it on top of Curly, just they just couldn't be bothered with it. It finally died about an hour later. Then, about 30 minutes after that, La Stooges realized that there is a snake on the porch, and we do not like snakes, and we should attack the crap out of it en masse and kill it several times over, and then try to eat it, but wait we do not actually eat snakes so we'll just go ahead and put it on John's shoes.

Here's a nice feeling: We finished with supper around 7, about half an hour ago, and John and the kids cleaned the kitchen for me because I'm still not feeling 100% (that, and the kitchen was mostly clean to begin with). I put a load of clothes in the washer, and came up here. I can now hear the Beatles playing downstairs, and Evie is dancing. John and Sam were dancing also, but then realized that Billy is on the prowl, so Evie is dancing alone, and the boys are lying in wait to try and scare the stripes off Billy. The house smells good, there's good music going, we've got fun stuff planned for tomorrow, and everyone is happy right now. It's just a very happy and content feeling.

Wait, you say. Who is Billy? Well, I'll tell you. Billy is our very fat raccoon that hangs out in this area and eats the outside cat food if we forget to put the brick on the trashcan lid.

So, I'll leave you with this. Please let me preface this by saying that the book Back to Eden has been a huge blessing to me in many ways, and I agree with about 95% of everything in the book. It's an old one, written originally in 1939, though it has been updated every so often. I was reading the Pregnancy section the other day, and here is what I learned.

Mental Attitude: If you want a cheerful, happy child with a sunny disposition, that is just how you will have to be during your pregnancy. Special effort should be made by the mother to avoid as much unpleasantness as possible. A fit of anger, great fright, or novel reading will have a very bad effect on the child. The surroundings should be made as pleasant as possible, and it is positively the husband's duty to bring this about, as far as it lies in his power. By proper living, care, and treatment, pain can be almost entirely banished at childbirth.

Seriously.