I know the title of this blog is "Emptynested", but I have to admit that we've had a fledgling living here for the last year and a half. After I had my stroke, our daughter came home to help me out. This was very sweet of her, and I am grateful for everything she has done to help. I'm also ready for her to move back to Seattle. The daughter-unit discovered the first time she moved to the Emerald City (for college) that she loves living in the city and when she moved back here to the 'burbs, I think we both discovered that she probably should stay there.
We had some hamsters once that illustrate this point perfectly. Originally, we had one hamster; a female named Smokey. The son-unit came home from third grade one day so excited. "Mom! guess what?! Vince (all my son's friends had old guy names) has a hamster and its a boy! We could have babies!" I said "OK - we'll put them together for one weekend and if anything happens fine - but we're not going to do it again." The hub said "If?"
The next Friday, Vince and his mom showed up with the hamstud in a shoe box. We put him in Smokey's cage and they eyed each other suspiciously across the wire floor. The fact that my two kids and Vince had their faces pressed against the bars and kept urging them "Go on - do it!" probably ruined the mood. Plus, I don't really think the kids knew what "it" was. I said "Maybe they want some privacy." The little weasels ran off and got a box which they decorated with hearts. Over a heart shaped hole in the end of the box they wrote "Hamster Tunnel of Love. Maybe they did know what "it" was...
The hammies went in the box. Then back to the cage. Long story short - despite the kids' best efforts, Smokey conceived and gave birth to 12 babies three weeks later. Smokey was a great mom and didn't eat her babies. In fact, the only one she bit was me when I tried to comfort her. You know, mom to mom. Anyway, we were lucky as heck because we were able to line up homes for everybody. At three weeks old the little hams were old enough to go to their new homes and people came to pick them up. We'd decided to keep the one all gray one. She got her own little cage and we moved her into it
One person came to pick up with a broken cage so we gave them the one the grey hamster was in and put Little Gray in with her mommy. Just until we could get another cage. As soon as her daughter's tootsies hit the pine shavings, Smokey went into Vicious Attack Hamster mode and went for the young one's neck. Gray gave back pretty good, but she was way out-sized and nearly lost a back leg. She survived and we named the her Boo Boo.
And I came up with my theory that once a grown daughter moves out, its probably best for her to stay moved out. So nobody tries attack anybody else. Visits are great and I will really miss her, but I don't think I'll miss the part where everything I do is wrong. Makes me want to rip some body's leg off.
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