Hamster Hero

One dark and rainy night, a hamster and a cat went into the laundry room. The next morning, only the cat was left.

Four days later, a man (me) lays in bed, awake, at around 5 am.

He hears the distinctive noise of rodent on cardboard. Channeling his inner owl, he attempts to locate the rodent using only his ears, in the dark morning.

Finally, the time is right to strike, so he wakes up his wife (the striker), who turns on the lights and stands by hopefully waiting as the man removes the concealing boxes from the stack near his side of the bed.

Suddenly the man sees the telltale fur and stubby tail of the elusive rodent, which then becomes wedged between a tile box and the gently sloping straw bale wall. It's black, beady eye gazing upward, with some hope yet that it can't be reached, the man readies his striker, then pulls out the last box of tile. She lunges and snaps up the furry beast, who still tries pointlessly to run, while being held in the striker's agile talons.

She puts the escape-artist back in it's cage and adds packing tape over the exit covers to prevent the prisoner from a repeat performance.

For his alertness (insomnia), box lifting prowess, and keen vision in saving "Chewy" (the rodent) the man is dubbed "Hero".

Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome

This is the doctor's diagnosis of Arthur's condition.
Here's a link describing it:
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/cvs/index.htm

A couple interesting points:

1. It appears to be a label without an explanation
2. It could be what I had as a child, my cycle was yearly and culminated on Dec. 26th. Although, I could very easily attribute my bouts with the double excitement of Christmas, followed by my birthday.

I think similar factors may trigger Arthur's bouts. An unpredictable eating or sleeping schedule may be triggers (this is my opinion here).

One last note, from the doctor: known trigger foods are a) Chocolate, b) Cheese and one other that Heidi will have to remind me of...

True Crime

Last Saturday, after leaving Amelia's birthday party, we pulled out onto Talbot road, northbound, when a giant, green SUV whipped in front of us, practically grazing our right front bumper.
In seconds it became apparent that he was chasing a gray sedan, whose trunk was smashed in.
A few more seconds went by, and the driver of the giant green SUV pulled up alongside the sedan and steered hard into it's left rear fender area. This sent the sedan into approximately three wild fishtails, and both of the oncoming lanes before the driver regained control and continued down Talbot towards Grady.
Before the vehicles were out of sight, we saw them go through a red light with a stream of cars from the opposite direction turning left in front of the racing gray sedan and green SUV. This did not deter both of them from weaving their way right through the light, and somehow, all the left-turners.
The chase made its way under the 405 overpass and after that we lost sight of them. By the time we got to Grady way, they were nowhere to be found. Heidi called 911, and found that others had already called, and they suggested that it was a gray Impala being chased by a green Yukon, which coincided very well with what we saw. They said the police were trying to track them down.

Arthur Doing Better

Arthur began an episode last Friday night where he couldn't hold down any food. Saturday, we took him to the urgent care clinic; they called it a Rotavirus and prescribed Promethazine syrup to keep the nausea at bay.

He stayed home from school until Thursday, because that's how long it took until we felt he had observed him enough to say he was consistently holding down food.

He ate well yesterday. The last time he couldn't hold down a meal was Tuesday's dinner.

We're going to take him to a pediatrician to see if we should be more careful about what goes in. Arthur has had periodic bouts of vomiting that are hard for us to explain; we're hoping for some advice on whether he appears to be prone to vomiting and if there is anything we can do to make it less likely.

Barbecue Under Snow

February was so warm, we barbecued two or three times and thought it was spring already. Then we made our way to March 28th and this is what happened at our barbecue station.

According to NPR, the Oregon Coast mountain range has received 400 times their average annual snowfall this winter.