Hi...
Sorry I've been out of the loop for so long. Alaskans tend to go into hibernation this time of the year, but in my case I can't blame it on Christmas shopping. Call me Scrooge
, but I try to stay out of the stores until the craziness is all over. :wink:
One of my oral hygienists once told me a horror story about a couple of clients she had -- the wife took impeccable care of her teeth and the husband totally neglected his teeth, and the wife ended up with periodontal disease but the husband's teeth were fine. The moral to the story is that even if you take the best care of your teeth possible, it's no guarantee that nothing bad will happen. But that being said (she was NOT trying to imply that taking care of your teeth is not important; no self-respecting oral hygienist would ever do that :mrgreen: ), you've reminded me that I've been doing a really lousy job flossing lately and I need to get back in the habit. And BTW, the only way I managed to get in the habit of doing it at all in the first place is to wash and save the used floss, and then I get to crochet with it. Probably one of the silliest behavior modification strategies you've ever heard, but hey, it worked. :lol:
Too bad we've got a couple thousand miles of Canada in between us so that we can't pop over to each other's houses and watch football and/or Dr Who together. I'd root for the Eagles along with you even if they were in last place, unless they were playing the Packers, of course. But even then, I wouldn't root against your team or anyone else's -- I'm not that kind of football fan. Rams vs Patriots would be ok with me. I'd probably root for the Rams because I used to live in LA, but I wouldn't have my heart set on it. I'd be happy for either one.
I don't know how Puff would react if we had a houseful of rowdy football fans on Superbowl Sunday. Loud voices don't seem to bother him as long as he's in familiar surroundings. I may have said before that I can talk a blue streak at my husband while I'm cuddling him at bedtime and it doesn't seem to wake him up -- not unless something makes me laugh and I end up bouncing him around. Not enough room in here for a Superbowl party of our own though -- barely enough for the two of us to watch TV together.
I also need to order some more UV tubes and maybe another fixture around the end of this year. All of my sleek fancy Zoo Med fixtures have shorted out at the point where the power cord attaches to the casing. They are poorly designed and poorly packaged. So we tried this cheap little thing with a detachable cord. Bare minimum design to hold the ballast and the tube -- nothing fancy or extra, but it has a good reflector and cranks out the UV according to the meter, and my husband says the power cord has a fairly standard, although not common, connector and could be replaced if necessary, so we're probably going to get another one for a spare, and it's always good to have at least one new tube waiting in the wings for backup. Puff probably won't know the difference for Christmas. It will probably be a quiet day at home, and his Christmas feast will probably be the usual -- roaches, maybe crickets, butternut squash, as many bites of greens as "Daddy" can slip in his mouth whiles he's chewing on the other stuff, and hopefully some Repashy Grub Pie -- I need to make up some more of the gel and probably order some more of the powder.
It sounds like your reptiles already have everything they need, so fruit treats for Christmas are probably just fine and something they'll enjoy if they like it. Puff has never liked fruit, so I haven't tried to push it. We're lucky if we can get the little carnivore wannabe to eat any veggies at all. :roll:
Sounds like your hamster is totally tame now -- too bad she's nocturnal. I think I'd forgotten that you had guinea pigs too. You guys have quite a family of critters, but I'm so sorry to hear about your gecko and your cats. I know you took good care of them and gave them the best life possible. And I'm not going to tell you not to get any more cats, because I know that you can have cats in the same house with other critters as long as you're as careful with them as you are. I've never had cats and reptiles at the same time (since we became reptile people because my husband is allergic to cats, and if they ever retest him and find out he's not allergic anymore, we might even consider getting one...) but before I was married I had 2 cats, 2 ferrets, and a gerbil, and no one ever drew blood, even though the cats and the ferrets played with each other pretty rough sometimes. I kept them all separate from the gerbil, and I separated the cats from the ferrets whenever I wasn't able to supervise them. So I agree with you -- it can be done with cats and other multiple species, although there are a number of others on these discussion forums who would probably disagree with us. That's ok -- it's up to you to get kittens whenever you and Tom decide that the time is right.
"Before depression hits ... I'm gonna go drown it in guitar playing." I think I'm going to have to print that out and stick it on my fridge or on a mirror or something. You are wiser than I am and you've got yourself one heck of a good coping skill there. -- Because speaking of depression, I've been down for the count for like the past 3 weeks, but for no apparent reason other than that Alaskan thing that some people call "seasonal affective disorder" which I'm not sure if I really have, because I can get depressed in the middle of the summer too. In my case, no one has died, and Puff is not quite as sick as he was this last spring according to his last checkup, although he's lost some weight again. His blood tests were all fairly normal, all things considered, but he got some more iron and B12 and has another follow up appointment after Christmas. So as long as I don't think about the idea that he may be the last little critter that my husband and I will ever be able to have, I've got no reason to be depressed. But I spent most of the last 3 weeks binge-watching old Star Trek reruns (BBC America's fault for not putting on another Dr Who catch up marathon so I could watch the new ones I keep missing on Sunday evenings, although they are hinting at one around Christmastime) and playing stupid card games with our computer on the local hard drive (maybe I should get into xbox? At least I'd be interacting with other people) -- totally non productive. Couldn't make myself do anything else. Now I don't have a guitar (at the moment), but I do have a nice $2 recorder flute and a 30 year old electronic keyboard that still works, and music does usually make me feel better, so why didn't I... well, you get the picture.
Some big box guitar store from the lower 48 is supposed to be moving in to the latest reincarnation of our distressed local shopping mall, which is also being taken over by some outfit from outside Alaska, and there is the usual talk of them driving many of the little local "mom-and-pop" stores out of business, but I'm seriously considering being a very bad disloyal Alaskan and going over to the "dark side" to check out the "evil" new guitar store when it finally opens up here. If I can get a nice basic 6-string acoustic guitar, decent quality, nothing fancy -- I might go for it. I'd rather not order it off the internet because I'd kind of like to "try it on and see if it fits" -- it's been a long time since I had one.
Puff has a new trick -- or maybe an old one that I haven't been paying enough attention to lately. Usually in the middle of the day (well after his good morning cuddle and long before "Daddy" comes home from work and gives him his
bath) he starts bouncing off the walls and head bobbing at me. A little while later, he plops a nice big sloppy one somewhere in his tank. So apparently, he is quite capable of letting me know when he has to go to the bathroom. There usually isn't time to fill his tub up with water and get it the right temperature -- that and I can't always tell the difference between "Get me out of here I have to go to the bathroom" and "Get me out of here I want to run around the house and get into mischief" (which is not an option). But today I put him in the empty bathtub and gave him a little belly massage, but apparently it doesn't work without the warm water. So I finally put him back in his tank, but with a paper towel under him, and guess what I found on the paper towel a little while later? :roll:
My husband has been wondering if we could train him to poop in the upside down frisbee that we use for a water dish (he never drinks out of it, but it probably helps with humidity), because it would be easy to clean up -- dump it down the drain and wash the frisbee, just like we do with the bathtub (a storage bin made out of a similar type of shiny plastic).
Maybe there's potential here? He can tell me when he needs to poop, but so far he's unwilling and/or unable to do it when and where I want him to. I can understand "unable" (I'm not young anymore either :wink: ) But maybe we could work on "unwilling?" So if you were ever successful in potty training any of your beardies, I'd be interested in any suggestions you might have. I do know that you have to be consistent, and that may not be something I can manage in my situation, but the goal would be to have a designated place in his tank (such as the frisbee with water in it) where he could go when we're not around to give him a
bath. He does often go "downstairs" because he doesn't like to mess up his basking platform, but not always. And BTW, I do understand that even if you can get a beardie potty trained, you should never expect perfection. :wink:
The worst thing about letting so much time pass between posts is that it makes for really bad TLDRs
--Sorry about that. If I can stay out of depression for a while, maybe it won't be so long between the next ones. Meanwhile, hope you have a nice weekend and some fun getting ready for Christmas, even though I know you're missing some family members this year, and so hard to lose them all at once, too. I hope you have lots of good memories of them.