The Life of Rats

So I thought I should show you how the cage looks, what the girls have to play with, what they eat, etc.

 So here's their mansion of a cage, where they spend most of their time. Up on top half there are three hammocks, all purchased from Booth Seventeen (which has since stopped producing them, since the owner has some severe health problems). There is also a litter box, which they're still figuring out, and the green food dish (behind which is a water bottle). The rope is basic cotton rope, two braided pieces twisted together and pulled as tightly as I could get it. They don't use it often. The wheel is a new acquisition - a Senior Wodent Wheel that Moe and Anise use decently frequently, and the other two mostly ignore.

On the lower half there's a nesting box, food dish, water bottle - and the newest thing in the cage, a cloth-stripfilled digging box that has some as of yet undiscovered treat puzzles.

Then of course there are the girls themselves - Moe down on the bottom, hoping I'll let her out, Ai nibbling on something from the food dish, and Anise and Absinthe sleeping up together in a hammock.
 

The food I feed them is a mixture of Kaytee food blocks (which have full nutrition for the girls), and Suebee's Rat Diet - a new batch I made just last Friday.

Suebee's Diet doesn't have full nutrition (according to The Rat Lady ... that's why I've added the lab blocks, which I may switch out for something else) but it does satisfy much of what they need - and, most important to me, it uses human-grade food and doesn't have anything in it I wouldn't eat myself. It's also cheaper than buying traditional food.

The big problem with rat food sold in most pet stores is that it's formulated for rats and mice - usually taking mouse diet into consideration more than rat diet, which leaves much to be desired for the rats - and gives them a lot of junk they don't need (peanuts, which can cause allergic reactions; corn, which if eaten in large quantities can cause illness or even death ...). That's the biggest reason I decided to make my own food for my girls.

So there's a bit more information about the little fuzzbutts!

June to August

So, the last time I posted anything meaningful was waaaay back in June. Even before Tene's birthday.

So, for Tene's birthday I made dinner and a cake. I, unfortunately, spent more time on the cake, when what Tene was looking forward to was me making him dinner and having it ready for him when he got home.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun making dinner and a cake for Tene (or, rather, making .... four cakes. They continually failed, and I was trying to make a multiple-layered cake - three of the four layers ended up being useable, if broken in half), and I enjoyed making him dinner.

The cake I made, as I mentioned above, ended up being three layers - and was a very rich chocolate with a chocolate ganache frosting. I also made a little red marzipan robot to decorate it with! The end result wasn't the most beautiful of things, but I was happy with it anyway, because it was fun to make and it was special and everything. The robot ended up looking like the Pusher Robot (possibly the Shover Robot, I can't remember which one is red) - here to protect us from the Terrible Secret of Space. Or like the red robot. That wasn't intended, it just ended up happening. And ... Tene asked me for a red robot, and I only had so much chance to do anything special with him (I wanted him to be much more detailed, but ran out of time).

I've been doing better at cooking dinner nightly the last few months; missing fewer nights than before. I'm really proud of myself for that. My main-made meal is still rather plain - pasta with Parmesan chicken and some type of vegetable or green.

I've become very fond of artichokes, personally. Especially their delicious centers. We eat at least one a week, and usually two each within the course of seven days. Hooray Costco! Bringing us healthy food in bulk!

I've also found that I'm okay at making steak. This was my second attempt, and was better than the first. Although I didn't actually cook the steak (Tene did that for me), I did do all the preparation for it, though. I was focusing on steaming the artichokes, asparagus, and broccoli, as well as frying (and burning) the onions.

I prefer working with chicken to steak, perhaps because I prefer lighter meat to red meat. Chicken is also a lot cheaper (hellooooo Costco and buying waaaay more chicken than I need!), although a lot nastier when raw (I wash my hands a dozen times when cooking with chicken, a lot less when cooking almost anything else).

Which brings me to tonight! Parmesan chicken, baked potatoes, baked Brussels sprouts, baked asparagus, and steamed artichokes. Made way-too-late to be reasonable, but we needed dinner.

In the last few months we've also added some things to our home - Now we have three bookshelves (two are full: one with books, the other with DVDs and video games), and a dining room table and chairs. We also have a nice red couch! Soon I should be getting my craft desk and shelves (ordered them from Ikea today), and hopefully within a few weeks or a month I should also get my computer desk as well. I'm excited that our home is coming together and things are looking so nice. It makes me feel nice and at home.

Speaking of my crafts - I've started up on them again. Right now I'm focusing on soft toys and possibly making a quilt for us for Christmas (a gift for us). I've also been working on fixing Tene's favorite blanket - a quilt his mother gave him when he left for college. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately I suppose), it has been well-loved, and is falling apart.

I'm doing the best I can to repair it, but it's taking a while and is difficult.

I'm hoping to get a sewing machine in the next few weeks/month or so, which will make my soft-toy making a lot easier (and save my back).

Otherwise, not much has been happening the last couple of months. Tene's been working and I've been sticking around taking care of home (and loving it). I'm starting to take up Yoga again, and I've joined a couple of local groups for books, writing, and crafts. I'm hoping to start taking classes again,  but I know it will be a while before I can - I'm really getting impatient, though, and wanting to return to school.

Well, that's all that's been going on around here. I've managed to kill three more plants (two small roses and a flowering plant called an Orange Star - I had named them Rosie and Posie, and ... I never named the orange one), and the girls are doing well. I'm hoping to get something to make a play area for them soon, so that I can have more than one of them out of the cage at the same time - as it is right now I'm too afraid of them running off in two (or four) different directions at once - leaving me unable to find them again.

So, that's it! I'll try to post more regularly again from now on.

The Girls Meet An Apple

I decided to put an apple in the girl's cage to see how they liked it.

They ended up finding my feet much more interesting, and it turns out that Moe is totally an attention whore.

Dinners For Two

One day I will be a master cook and a great housewife. I will have a healthy and delicious dinner ready and waiting for Tene when he gets home from

That hasn't happened yet, and probably won't for a while. But I'm working on it.

These are two meals that I have put together for Tene and I, and that were very delicious.

First was this lovely looking meal. I call it the Green Meal. We ate this maybe two weeks ago?

We've got an artichoke, boiled, with some garlic-lemon-butter for dipping. Then .... there's baked/steamed potatoes (they were baked in the oven, but were wrapped in foil, leading to a more steam-like situation than a bake-like situation; asparagus, which was fried; and finally brussels sprouts, which were baked in the oven. It was a very tasty meal, and I really enjoyed it. We'll probably be having it - or something similar to it - again soon.

Then, tonight's dinner - Parmesan crusted chicken which was made from two chicken breast halves and that I'm finally getting into the habit of cooking. I tend to have trouble not burning it to the pan. Up next we have whole-grain spaghetti with a tasty spinach pesto that Tene made on it. Ingredients for that were spinach, some basil, some olive oil, garlic, etc. It's very tasty, and gave us a good reason to use our new food processor! I'm very happy with the food processor. It's exciting. And, again, artichokes. Steamed, this time, but again with the artichokes.

I like artichokes. Who would have thought that such a spiky plant would be so delicious, let alone even edible? To whoever in the far past first attempted to eat an artichoke - thank you. You have made my diet a little healthier!

In other news, Tene and I might be starting on the paleo diet for the month of July, as a simple test for allergens and to see if it actually makes us feel healthier and more energetic like we've been told. So ... the two dinners above have parts that are disallowed - potatoes in dinner one, the pasta and breading on the chicken in dinner two. I'm hoping we get something good out of it, but even if we don't - it'll be a new, good experience, and I'm happy with that.

I've also be playing with my hairstyles, trying to find pretty things to do. Recently I figured out this one, which I thought looks elegant and casual at the same time. I might be cutting my hair soon, I'll give before and after pictures if I end up deciding that.

Other than that, things are going well for us here in CA. As seen above, we're eating mostly healthy - and we're being social and all that. We're working on getting me stable emotionally and healthy (the newest thing to happen is that I've been getting headaches almost every day, ranging from annoying cluster-headaches to full-on migraines, I see the doctor again on Monday to talk to him about it; currently looking at sleep and/or anxiety as the culprits).

Bad Dreams and Headaches

I've been having a lot of bad dreams lately - not quite nightmares, but enough to keep me up and make me feel bad for the day. Most of them center, oddly, around high school - particularly my high school choir. I'll have missed the entire semester, or I'll have a solo and my voice will crack, or I'll forget the words - or the entire song (or a combination of all of the above). I'm often made fun of in such dreams. Sometimes one of my high school crushes is in them - pretty evenly split between my main tormentor and my biggest support. Oddly, Tene is always lacking in these dreams. I'll end up feeling humiliated, confused, lost, and just plain depressed - a feeling which continues into my waking hours.

I don't know where these dreams are coming from, but I'm having them at least three nights every week. One of my friends suggests that they are little more than stress dreams, which certainly could be accurate. I just don't understand why I'm having them so much, and why they tend to focus around my old choir class.

I've also been having near-constant headaches. They've improved over the last week, but they're still there. I think I clench my teeth (perhaps grind them?) in my sleep, which would account for the pain. My doctor has given me some migraine medication to try to help take care of them - so far I've only needed it once.

Speaking of doctors I finally went in to try to understand why I've been so fatigued and tired. I underwent a sleep study (a take-home version, my breathing was monitored but my brainwaves weren't), and it looks like, while I don't have sleep apnea, I might have "Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome" - which basically means that while I don't stop breathing in the night (which is apnea) I get really close. I apparently don't enter the deep, very relaxing sleep (because when I do, I almost stop breathing, so I wake up - just a little - to avoid that), which is why I'm frequently tired. I'm trying to sleep with a C-Pap machine to see if I get better/more restful sleep with it. So far I've been having a hard time adjusting to sleeping with this HUGE THING on my nose, and it's been overly warm in our apartment - which means lots of uncomfortable sweating around the mask. I've gotten a few hours of good sleep from it, though, and I seem to be adjusting - just very very slowly. I think I might end up buying one for myself.

If I do have UARS, it could also explain my depression (or at least, part of my depression), my headaches, maybe even my bad dreams! I go in again on either Wednesday or Thursday, so we'll find out some more then.

Life has been mostly uneventful for us, honestly. It's nice here - I'm really liking Mountain View - and we're enjoying ourselves. So not so much to report right now.