Good deeds. Ah, Rats!

I don't do a lot for others. I try to take care of my friends, but that is usually as far as it goes when helping others is concerned. It's not that I don't want to help others, though. My time is limited between school and school work and taking care of Camden, so it's not like I can volunteer once a week at the Humane Society (which happens to be one of the few places to volunteer around here--no soup kitchen/homeless shelter/etc). I am generally broke, so I can't donate lots of money to organizations. I try to drop change into the Salvation Army buckets every year (actually, I make Camden do it), but that's about my limit.


(Photo not by me)


Well, a month ago I offered to help transport some rats who needed a home. In the rat world, I guess this is called a "rat train", getting rats from one place to another via multiple people. The rats were in St. Louis and needed to go to Ames, IA. I'm somewhere in the middle of all that, and (stupidly?) offered to pick the rats up in Columbia, MO, then drive them to Ottumwa, IA. All that equals out to be about 6 hours of driving for myself. And if I had thought about that before, I might not have done it. But, I said I would, and I did. And I feel good about doing it. I helped two girlie rats (who were likely at least slightly under-cared for: no fun toys, poor socialization, icky cage) find a forever home, with someone I know (well, very much suspect) will care for them and love them.

So I'm counting this as my one good deed for the year. Well, the big one. It was worth it.

Rats!

So, I bought Camden a rat for his birthday. We named him Robin (because Cam is Batman).


And, well, when we got home, I decided I wanted to know everything about having a rat for a pet. So I get online, search around. And found out I did it wrong. :( Pet store rats = less than good. (Because they're usually bred for snake food, therefore, the breeder doesn't worry about genetics or socializing the animals). And also that rats need buddies. Since there aren't any good rat breeders (or rescues) near-by, I went back to the pet store. But she had already sold all the rats she had. So we had to wait another two weeks. And into our lives came Remy and Spencer!

We're still working on getting the rat twins acclimated to living with us, but I think that within the next month or so, we'll have a trio of happy rats.

In other news, we're happy that it's October. Because October means Halloween/Samhain time. Yesterday we made a Halloween cake (from a box, I was feeling lazy!) and bought a pumpkin. Today, the pumpkin got turned into a mean jack-o-lantern (per Camden's request) and its seeds are sitting in a bowl of salt water waiting to be roasted. Yum.

Before classes started (or just really early in the semester) I started experimenting with energy manipulation. Well, I was attempting to train myself to be more open to feeling/seeing/sensing energies. Sadly, this semester has been MUCH MUCH busier than I expected (or hoped) and everything but day-to-day living and school work has fallen along the wayside. Including any magical living ideals and this blog. But not to worry! Only eleven weeks left in the semester! :)

Wordless... Monday?

Okay, I feel TERRIBLE about having no time to post (or read others' bloggings). And I still don't have time to post (or read). But here are some pics. (I'll be posting more about the rat in a post coming this weekend, I promise!)




I was playing with my macro on the next two pics.





I just snapped this pic randomly but I absolutely LOVE how it came out.