Random Thoughts...at the end of a hectic week
- The online Trib and New York Times have been a blessing in reducing mess and unnecessary paper around the house. They are, unfortunately, absolutely useless when you are housebreaking a puppy.

- We are now up to three dogs. The legal limit. I know it’s my limit. The new little gal is Bessie, a six week old beagle/keeshond mix. Yeah, her ‘soulful’ eyes melt my heart....but I never wanted to live in my own Daisy Hill Puppy Farm.

- I am proud of Fran’s kind heart and desire to make a home for every person and little animal. There are times I wish she worked at Deerfield’s Bakery and would drag home reject wedding cakes and petit fours.

- Kids (most kids, not just my own) will probe suspect vegetables in their soup at lunch. And then have little fear of touching a dead bird or mouse on the playground. After just three weeks of school, I am probably known as “Mrs. Don’t Touch It!”

- The baby mouse died while I was at the rectory last night. I brought this mouse home from school on Wednesday. The kids found his dead mother on the playground and then noticed the tiny, hairless, writhing orphan nearby. To calm their distress I promised to take care of it. It was still alive when it was time for me to go home, so I scooped it up in a Dixie cup. Remembering just enough from my La Leche League days to know that skim milk wouldn’t be the best thing I ran to Dominick’s for some half-and-half and a syringe. I tried to figure what would be best for a mouse based on the idea that bovine milk is high protein for rapid muscular development and human milk is high in sugar for rapid brain development. So what for a mouse?

We moved him to Rick’s office, which is not air conditioned, and put it under a desk lamp. I had to run out to our monthly Holy Hour and then our Respect Life committee meeting. Rick didn’t mind feeding the mouse in my absence. I think...

- Today I must tell the kids that the mouse didn’t make it. I told them Wednesday that its chances of surviving without its mother were not good and that I was taking it home to spare it a lonely death under the hot playground sun. Yesterday morning I was encouraged because it appeared to have a strong rooting reflex and ate eagerly.
Oh, well. He was buried quickly while I was still at work.

- I am looking forward to a shopping spree this afternoon at the Friends of the Lake Forest Library used book sale. Who knows what treasures will be found? Last year I found some much sought after homeschooling materials that I was able to resell at a modest profit. This should be a good chance to start my Christmas shopping, too. For a used book sale, some of the books have hardly been opened, let alone used or read.

In the midst of my enthusiasm I keep thinking of a quote mentioned by Warren Zevon (he thought it was Schopenhauer, but I’m not sure) that we buy books because we really think we are buying the time to read them. This reminds me of the days after my father’s death when my sister called me to complain that he was still receiving book club shipments. She wondered if he thought the angel of death would stay away if he knew you were expecting something from UPS.

- Yesterday, a very close friend became a grandmother for the first time. I am happy for her, her daughter and her 10lb. 4oz. grandson. But, she’s two years younger than I am and I find this all somewhat unsettling....I am a 20 year old trapped in a 48 year old body.