Mondays.

After today there are three days of school remaining until summer vacation starts.

Last night we sat the kids down to explain some guidelines for the summer. Things like, “No, you’re not staying up all night” and “No, you’re not playing unlimited hours of World of Warcraft” and “Yes, you will still need to shower occasionally”.

On the weekend we’re going to sit down as a family, talk about our summer budget (for the fun stuff, I mean, not the mortgage and groceries) and then we’re going to make lists of all the things we’d like to do. We’ll find out how much everything costs and we’ll vote on the assorted ways to spend the budget.

Then I’ll put together a big calender of events – for the summer – so everyone can see when/where/why we’ll be doing things.

Personally, I’m voting for “hang out at the library and read a lot of books and sleep late” but I think I’m the only one leaning in that direction as usual..

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Today is Report Card day in the house.

As in the past, the deal is that we expect to see lots of “tried his best!” comments. The actual marks don’t matter in the slightest to us. Go ahead, get a big fat “FAIL!” on your report card – as long as the notes say you tried really hard. Not everyone can rock at everything, y’know?

Maymo’s report card came last week and it was totally thrilling to see his progress. He was rewarded today with “Kirby” for the DS. The same game that makes him weep and throw himself to the floor when Middle One won’t let him play. We’re hoping to put an end to, “Can I play Kirby? Can I play Kirby? Now? Now? Now? Can I now?” for good.

The other two are getting “family” gifts – meaning they have to share them. This will please them significantly less than having something to lord over each other but it’s my job to promote harmony and not encourage idiocy. So, y’know, suck it up kids.

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As it turns out, my rat Mina had a stroke a while ago. She’s recovering nicely – able to move around and climb ladders in the cage and eating happily and grooming her face. The porphyrin she had going on for a while is mostly gone (she’s back to grooming) and she’s happy to lie across my arms and have her face and body gently massaged.

I held her for a while yesterday and placed her gently back in the cage afterward. Then I looked down at my shirt (usually I check to make sure she hasn’t peed on me since rats really like to pee on people) and saw… bugs.

There was a large patch of my shirt covered in.. bugs. Crawling, squirming, shiny little bugs.

And, no joke, I just about lost my mind. I ripped the shirt off, dry-heaving and shuddering and shimmying around the room.

Turns out they’re mites. Ugly mites, too.

And both rats have ‘em.

And I may never be able to sleep soundly again without feeling something crawling on me.

After some research (and more dry-heaving) and after consulting with Coffee (and more shivering and shuddering) it was decided that we’d purchase some Ivermectin from the local farm supply store. Ivermectin in an oral syringe meant for HORSES.

We now have enough Ivermectin to treat an entire country’s worth of rats, I think, given that the dose for a rat is “the size of an uncooked grain of rice”.

I can’t stop shuddering.